Shatterglass and Stripped Seams
by KTwain
Summary: Booth and Brennan both hide their suffering from their perspective pasts from each other. However, both can sense something is terribly wrong with their partner. NOW COMPLETE.
1. Wrap Me Up In War

**This turned out pretty angsty, but I really enjoy toying with their tantalizing pasts; surely they can't be as all happy as they appear. I enjoy the idea; don't be confused when the next chapter is from Brennan's perspective. I intend this to be a flip perspective. Let me know what you think. **

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"No!" Booth yanked the sheets off himself in bed, sweating, the drops of glistening salt rolling down his rippling, shaking bare chest as he panted. However, his sweat wasn't how he usually liked to spend it in bed; the terror still danced in his eyes, and the dread still crushed at his heart. He looked around wildly at the shadows, fear inundating his senses and making everything visually twice as sharp, twice as bright, and the shadows twice as fast and stark against his walls.

He fell out of bed in an attempt to walk to the kitchen. Covered in a light sheen of sweat, one that smelled like stale horror, he jogged quickly to get the adrenaline sending his heart crashing around his ribcage pumping out of his system. He opened the fridge warily, and was blinded by the intense beacon that penetrated his retina. Squinting, he grabbed a bottle of beer but stopped, shaking a little harder, and put it carefully back. He poured himself a glass of lemonade instead and gulped it down. He glanced at the clock. 4 am.

He reasoned it would be time to work out anyway, have enough time to get to the office. But a snarky little voice inside his soul, his soul that looked like shatterglass and that snarky voice sitting in the middle of the bullet holes at the most broken of parts, told him that there was too much time before his 9 am desk job. Instead, he quickly dropped to the floor and proceeded to do a hundred pushups. By sixty-five, he was sweating again, but feeling more natural. By 150, having exceeded his limit after shrugging his shoulders, he was tired once more.

_At this rate_, he chortled grimly, _I'll have the nicest body on the East coast. _His working out habits had increased as the nightmares had. People had taken to commenting; guys in the office made approving remarks, his captain had noticed, and the squints had each told him separately how good he was looking – especially Angela. Even Bones had noticed, to his surprise. He had been in a t-shirt and she had commented on his biceps. He had swelled with pride and shrugged off his extra workout; it never seemed a burden.

Until now.

Until these late night where fear stalked the shadows and nightmares grinned ghoulishly. Where Booth was stuck in a world of terrifying dreams that were almost a comfort. They were just reflections of his own world, of events that had occurred, that he had survived.

They were proof he remembered.

He stumbled slightly over his sweatpants and fell on top of his comforter; knowing his sweat soaked sheets were now so saturated, it was time to change them again. Drat, it had only been three days.

He shook slightly in mild trepidation for what lay in wait for him; for the little hell that had no other doors. He finally relaxed enough to drift off. Unfortunately for Booth, it was the same dream he had just escaped.

_"Stay down Teddy!"_

_ "Course Sergeant."_

_ "I mean it corporal, on the ground."_

_ "Yessir."_

_The shot went out, and Booth's target fell, but they had spotted the helmet, that irritating kid's waving, bobbing head, and shot back. _

_ "Booth!" He dropped to his knees beside Teddy, but it wasn't Teddy. It was Bones painted out for war, her hair spreading out in crimson but his dream wavered; her hair wasn't crimson. Then he saw the pool of blood dying it so, coming out of the top of her skull; only the top half wasn't there. It was gone, and her blue eyes were staring at him through a mask of death, a last mockery of love still lingering about her lips. He held her in his arms, his mouth open for a cry of soul wrenching agony, but the blood was pouring over his own face, so thick and suffocating he couldn't breathe. He gasped for air, but the sanguine copper taste flooded his mouth, his lungs. He was drowning. _

_He was drowning. _

_He reached a hand for help and a foreign voice uttered a guttural command. The bloodbath stopped, but the other tortures began._

_ As the hose to his feet began breaking his bones, he began to cry; he wasn't an FBI agent, he was a scared kid just out of college. He was only 22. This wasn't what he had signed up for. He glanced down at the bloody mess of his soles, but noticed they were beating his feet with bones. A femur, to his limited knowledge of working with…Brennan. His gaze was immediately drawn to the corner, to what he hadn't seen as he felt the blood still crusting on his face. He saw her gutted and mutilated body next to his chair and knew instantly whose femur it was. He felt the bile rising but the blood streaming from the sky again and he was drowning. _

_God, he was drowning. And they said drowning was peaceful._

"No!" Booth wrenched the twisted coverlet off himself, feverish, the recurring sweat trickling down his torpid, trembling body as he coughed for air. He realized he had been there before that same night. He angrily threw the coverlet at the clock. Five am. An hour. Another hour of torture. There was no sleeping anymore.

He rolled to his feet and angrily pulled on basketball shorts and shoes. The 24 Hour Gym neon lights were a welcome glow to his tired mind. The pretty young trainer waved cheerily; she had just gone on shift. She knew him. He was there every day, looking worse in the face, and better in the body as the weeks crept on. Booth turned on the loudest music he could find and began pumping iron, a grim look on his face as if he were about to murder someone.

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The two-hour workout had exhausted his already fatigued body; he was mentally and physically spent. He had even run home, pushing himself until he wasn't sure he could make it the entire way. One thing was for sure; he'd be sore tomorrow, which rarely happened. But today had been bad.

Booth glared blearily in the mirror as he stripped for the shower and groaned.

The day hadn't even begun.


	2. Hold Down My Horror

**Yikes this is unsavory_. _Reviews are always welcome oh and watch out for language! (If you've got sensitive ears...eyes) Sorry about the angst; it will resolve itself bit by bit. But first you have to see these broken people. **

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The clock said 4 am. She wondered what the rest of the world was doing; sleeping most likely. In Angela's case, she could be having sex somewhere. In Booth's case, he was probably snoring up a storm, his television still on. It never ceased to amaze her how he could sleep anywhere. He scoffed and called it military training. She secretly believed it was a superpower.

She thumped her head against the wall, sitting in her bed. She sighed. _Four am,_ she thought wearily, _we've got to stop meeting like this_. She chuckled inwardly and reminded herself to tell that to Booth. He would find it funny. She stopped chuckling though; telling him would raise a slew of questions. Like why she hadn't been sleeping for the past two months. She flipped open her laptop in an attempt to write, but her inbox was still pulled up and 30 odd emails, unopened from the same address screamed at her. GreersonD The word burned into her mind, into her optical nerve until she closed her eyes and saw it dancing, suspended, white words in a field of bright purple. She swallowed and clicked on an email gingerly. It was the most recent.

_Fuck You Whore. _

That's all it said. She swallowed back bile; it was that taste she got in her mouth when fear began clawing up her chest like an unwelcome cat. She quickly panned to the first sent email. It was written crudely, without salutation.

_Temperance Brennan; my my my, you've done well for yourself. Remember the good old days Rancy? Or should I say Raunchy? Haha. You don't seem to remember me. Well, for a good four months, I was your "brother." Only you never loved me the way you should have. Maybe we could have coffee. We could talk about the profits of your book. How much you making these days? Better than me, I'm sure. _

_Let's chat. _

_Devon_

Brennan didn't realize the too fast breathing was coming from her chest. It was pounding in her ears like the ocean waves in a tempest; it was filling up the dark room, and she could feel something crushing her down, weighing on her chest, could almost feel those sweaty, heavy hands clawing at her thighs. She began panting and hand shaking, she reached for the light. For a wild, impossible moment, she thought she saw him there, his dull brown eyes glinting with desire, his heavy lips dripping with saliva that were about to descend on her, his sweating body shaking the bed.

She closed her mouth to force the air through her nose, but she was breathing so hard in remembrance of all their little "chats" over those months in the Greerson home. She had been so shy and so rangy it had been a joke to try to fight. Her screams were simply ignored after the first time Devon told his parents they were playing a game. After she had been moved from that home, she immediately had signed up for karate lessons at the YMCA; she had learned her lesson. Being locked in the trunk of a car was a welcome relief.

Rancy; her least favorite name of all time. She had been called many appellations at different homes, but Rancy…it sounded like Nancy, or another old name that didn't quite sit well on the tongue. She shivered and felt like she was coming apart at the seams. They lined her body, holding her messy life inside her; irrational as it was, she could almost feel them, starting at her temples and wending down her neck, over her shoulders, to her finger tips, down her thighs and beind her knees, ending with their little toes. As she shook, her seams threatened to unravel, tearing her apart. She glanced at the clock in panic, after quickly and mentally berating herself to hold it together. She clutched at her arms and squinted at the green light.

It was 4:10. She got up to make some Valerian root tea to calm herself down. Drinking it slowly, she watched something inane and inaccurate on television until she felt sleepy. Irrationally afraid of her own bed, she simply lay on the couch and pulled a knit throw over herself and closed her eyes, leaving the television on and thinking of Booth.

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Her shrill phone woke her. She glanced it horror at the clock. It was suddenly 8:45. She had 15 minutes to get to the office. That would be Booth, calling to say he was picking her up. She grabbed the phone, breathless and mind fogged with banal terror, the kind she woke with every morning now.

"Booth, I'm coming down. I…I need a few minutes. I'm running late." She noticed her cup of tea on the coffee table. "I spilled. I have to change quickly. No! No, don't come up. I just have to throw on some clothes. Uh-huh. Yes. Be down. Bye."

Her clothes flew on in record time. Grabbing her files and some jewelry she shoved them uncaringly into the bag and tore down the stairs only to remember her phone and keys. She grabbed them both, locked the door and pelted down two at a time.

She scanned the parking lot for the black SUV she was so used to. It sat, idling, Booth's head propped against a hand; even from here she could see the tattoo on his left wrist that meant _destiny_. She climbed into the car, winded as Booth grinned at her.

"Hey Bones, nice hair." Glaring, she flipped down the mirror and savagely forced her uncombed hair into a bun; it wasn't her best. She reached into the bag and pulled on her jewelry as he began to turn into traffic in silence. She looked down at what she was wearing and groaned. She had worn this yesterday; the clothes she had grabbed were out of her dirty hamper. She ground her teeth but figured that if anyone noticed, it would be Angela. Booth didn't pay attention to silly things like clothes.

"Didn't you wear that yesterday?" he asked cheekily, "what, laundry wasn't done?" She took a deep calming breath and looked at him coolly.

"I happen to like this shirt." She looked out the window in search of something to say. "Can we stop at Starbucks? I'm starving and have no coffee."

"We're already running late," he griped. But his face lit with a perfect smile. "But this is why you love me Bones," she looked quickly over at him, and noticed he was gesturing at the drink holders. Two steaming lattés sat waiting.

"You're the best Booth," she said fervently, and gulped down the coffee.

"You look tired," he observed, watching her face.

"I was up late," she confessed, and quickly added, "I lose track of time when writing." He nodded sagely and she hid her face behind her coffee; she hadn't worked on her book in weeks. Her publisher was about to tear her hair out.

"You look tired yourself," she observed primly, delicately steering the conversation away from her. It seemed to be the wrong direction, because his jaw clenched in anger.

"Yeah well, I was up late too."

"Watching tv?" she guessed. He nodded the affirmative.

"Yeah, watching tv."

They were silent, each drinking their little cup of lies.

"How's the book?"

"Great," she managed to sound eager. "How's your tv?"

"Fantastic," he muttered, trying to sound interested. They both fell silent.

"I'm really tired," Brennan finally confessed, not wanting to keep of the charade of small talk.

Without a word, Booth turned on the radio. An announcers voice filled the car peacefully.

_And this song is dedicated to a…Rancy out there. Rancy Bren. So Rancy…this one is for you_.

Brennan froze, cold in disbelief as music began floating about the car.

"Rancy," chuckled Booth, "what a perfectly awful name. I feel sorry for the poor woman whose parents forced that upon her." Brennan made an agreeing noise before fumbling for the sunglasses she shoved over her face to hide her terrified eyes. They were quiet as Booth drove nonchalantly, and Brennan sat passively. Both noticed the other; Booth was so tense, Brennan wondered how the steering column didn't snap. Booth watched the fabric over her collarbone shaking. Neither asked; neither offered. Brennan took a cleansing breath and concentrated on the words.

She had never heard the song, titled "Excitable Boy." But as the lyrics floated around the car, she shivered.

_He took little Susie to the Junior Prom_

_Excitable boy, they all said_

_and he raped her and killed her, then he took her home_

_Excitable boy, they all said_

_Well, he's just an excitable boy_

_After ten long years they let him out of the Home_

_Excitable boy, they all said_

_And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones_

In revulsion, Brennan's hands slapped at the volume and turned it off.

"Hey," protested Booth, "that had a good beat."

"I don't like that song."

"What's wrong with it?" he asked blithely. She bit her lip.

"I just don't like it."

"Fine. We'll sit in silence," snapped Booth. "What a great start to a day too." Too tired to bicker, she stared out the window.

In her insomnia, this day never ended.


	3. Don't You Drop Me

"Hey Booth," squealed Angela sultrily as he sauntered by. He gave her a nod, but rushed to his car instead; the case had been long and grueling today. There were no leads, and he was too tired to think of any. Being with Brennan was killing him. Her sincere but off beat questions were rubbing his skin the wrong way today after a distinctly bad night. His soreness was already creeping in and he had already had a fight with Cam, blown off Sweets and snapped at Hodgins. Angela was probably the only one he hadn't been miffed at today, and he wasn't going to start now.

He felt Brennan's eyes on him as she watched him leave through the glass and even from feet away, he could tell something was wrong with her. She was alternatively reading her computer screen, and staring in revulsion at the flowers she had gotten earlier. They were nice flowers, and Booth was a little irked with why Brennan was treating them like a death trap. He had read the card himself. It simply said _From Your Brother_. He thought it was nice of Russ to send her flowers; hell he felt like a crappy brother not sending Jared something or helping out with Padmae's bridal shower. He would eventually have to plan the bachelor party. He was, after all, the best man.

He shut the door to his black SUV in the parking lot and locked it, the sound clicking with finality. For a blissful second, he closed his eyes and reclined his chair all the way back, just lying there for a minute. He grasped the keys tightly in his palm so he wouldn't lose them, and then flung his other arm over his face to block out the minimal light from the five pm parking garage shadows.

"_Don't let go_,"_ she whimpered, and Booth found himself suddenly standing on the railing of Brennan's apartment, locked wrist to wrist with a dead weight. Déjà vu flooded his senses; there hung Howard Epps beneath him. But as he watched, Howard Epps transformed and he was holding the arm of a woman, with a shadowy face he could hardly remember. But she was blonde with fine features; Jared took after her most. _

_ "Don't let go of me Seeley boy," she whispered, and Booth felt his heart wrench at her nickname, playing on her nickname for Jared: silly boy. _

_ "I won't," he grunted the promise and put his back into heaving, his muscles straining as he struggled to lift her up against her dead weight with only his arms. He stiffened in shock at the knife that was punched into his back, both forced inside but sliding quickly through his kidney like butter. He couldn't breathe, couldn't scream…he couldn't hold on. Involuntarily, the nerves in his arms loosened and his mother fell, screaming, plummeting to her death as Booth lay twitching on the concrete, his own head smacking a railing at the precise time her screams abruptly ended. _

_ "That was very rude Agent Booth," sneered a sadistically familiar voice, and Booth slit his eyes against the light, his hand wrapped around the knife sticking out of his back. _

_ "Very rude indeed," he smiled grimly and presented what he had been holding behind his back. It was a severed head, but not the head of his wife Caroline, but Brennan's head, eyes still open in shock. Booth screamed then as Epps carefully set it on his chest, heaving as he couldn't move, and the last thing he saw was the green blinking lights coming out of Brennan's neck before the world went white. _

Booth started awake at the knock on his window.

"Booth! Booth! Are you okay? Booth!" Brennan was banging harshly against the safety glass. Booth, so scared at just her head floating in view of his window he moved forward, only to smash his forehead into the steering wheel. His fingers fumbled for the unlock button. As soon as the car was open, she was scrabbling at the door handle, yanking it open and taking his head in her hands.

"This looks pretty bad," she frowned down at him. His hands were all over her waist, hugging her to him.

"You're okay," he said inanely. "I thought…"

"It was a nightmare Booth," she said, as soothingly as Brennan could. Her fingers were gently working around his throbbing head.

"It's just a bruise. You've got a head like an anvil you know."

"Thanks," he breathed sarcastically. It helped; he needed to be a little tougher here. "Bones, what are you doing here?" He looked at the clock, but his car wasn't on.

"Booth, you left hours ago. I was going home for the night when I noticed your car was still here. I was…I was worried Booth."

"I guess I fell asleep," he said sheepishly. She glared at him.

"You almost gave me a heart attack when I saw you. You were pretty grey." Booth scowled.

"What time is it?"

"It's almost 8:30."

"At night?" he blinked. He had left the lab at five. She nodded grimly.

"Booth…" she was hesitant. "Are you okay? That was a pretty intense dream. I couldn't wake you up. I was banging and banging but you wouldn't wake up…" The fear was evident in her voice and he rushed to assure her.

"It's nothing Bones – everybody has nightmares. I just had the misfortune of having one right now." _Where you could see_ he added mentally kicking himself. "Bones," he said gruffly, pulling his seat back upright. "I gotta go…work out."

"You don't want dinner?" she said, and he could hear the hurt in her voice, and in her heart.

"I really need to work out Bones," he laughed, slapping his stomach. "I'm getting a beer belly." She leveled a cool, impersonal stare at him, and his laugh slipped off his face. Damn she scared him sometimes.

"You worked out this morning Booth," she accused, her voice almost distant. She did a very Brennan like gesture; one that flaunted social norms and personal space and put her own stomach on his abdomen. He froze. "You are hardly getting a beer belly," she said pointedly running her fingers over the sharp contours of his perfectly toned muscles. He was disconcerted and distracted with her fingers as they slipped from his shirt; his skin only a hair's breadth away. He focused on her first comment.

"What? How could you-"

"You showered. Your hair was still wet."

"Yeah so?" he scoffed, trying to cover his trepidation, "people gotta shower Bones, or else we'd stink."

"You always shower at night," she said frowning. "Except when you work out in the mornings. You told me that you worked out the first morning you came in with wet hair." He swallowed. That had been nearly two months ago. She was more observant that he gave her credit for. He'd have to keep that in mind; maybe buy a hairdryer. He shook himself. That was ridiculous, a man using a hairdryer.

"You still working out?" she said dispassionately, her blue eyes boring into his until he gulped; he wondered if she knew the effect she had on him sometimes. There were days when he felt fourteen years old around her.

"I should get some target practice in," he amended. Shooting wasn't quite as labor intensive as working out, but it did block out most thought; concentration and the sound of gunfire were almost better than loud music. Thoughts were scared away like fish in a pond. He liked the idea better and better.

"Great. We'll grab a burger – well, you will – at the diner, and we can go."

"We?" he said sourly.

"Sure," she shrugged casually, "I could go for some practice as well."

"Hop in," he said sarcastically, inserting the keys in the ignition and starting the car. She gave him one more, blank stare that had his eyes quivering in their sockets and his soul shaking on display. She climbed into the passenger seat without another word. He scowled in return; he hated the way she could do that. The only person who could scare him as much as she did was himself – in his dreams.

_Maybe she scares you because of what she could do_, whispered a voice in his mind softly. He glared out the windshield so ferociously that he was surprised not to see a stone column crumble into dust.

_What does _that_ mean? _He seethed. The tires screeched as he buzzed out of the parking garage.

In his hear though, he heard her snarky scientist voice.

_Don't play dumb….Seeley boy._


	4. Snakepit of Sharks

**ah...sorry. This attempted to become nicer, but Booth and Brennan are being stubborn. They do not enjoy resolving conflict so quickly. Reviews are welcome**

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Brennan's eyes slid closed in horror at the messenger boy bearing flowers. It was the fourth day in a row he had come with elaborate bouquets. Cam had gladly jumped at the tiger lily and yellow rose arrangement when Brennan had offered it to her the first day before she and Booth had gone to the range to practice. Angela's desk was similarly decorated with an orchid, snowbell and iris arrangement. Brennan had even gone so far as to offer her intern Daisy a bouquet of daisies (Brennan's second favorite flower) and bluebonnets. Glowing, Daisy had skipped off to show Sweets. Brennan was seriously regretting her choice not to just throw the flowers away; Daisy now detoured to her office whenever possible to give inanely long updates and to beam in the presence of her boss.

The messenger boy, no older than sixteen, looked disconcerted.

"Take them back? I can't take them back. Please ma'am…doctor…If I take them back to the office, I'll be written up for not doing my job. I'll get fired!"

"That's fine, never mind," sighed Brennan. "Put them on the table over there." She didn't even look in the little box tied around the vase. He bobbed quickly.

"Sign here? And here. Thanks, seriously, for saving my job. They're beautiful daffodils." With that he left, leaving Brennan, arms crossed in her computer chair, glaring balefully at her favorite yellow flowers sitting innocuously cheerfully on a glass coffee table.

"Daffodils!" crowed Booth, sauntering into her office and interrupting thick dread that was coiling around her stomach. "How you doing there Bones?" She nodded stiffly.

"I'm working Booth." He pulled a grumpy face.

"You're always working. I feel like I haven't seen you in days!"

"Don't be ridiculous," she said distantly, staring intently at her computer screen. He made a boyish huffing sound but she could feel his calculating gaze studying her as she concentrated on the computer screen before her. Little did he know it was completely blank.

"You didn't open the box Bones."

"Hmm?"

"The box, around the flowers Russ keeps sending you. Look." He pulled off what seemed to be a necklace box tied shut with ribbon. "Here, come open it." She shrugged uneasily but brushed it off as irritation in her voice.

"You open it."

"I'm not going to open your present!" Her eyes, wider than usual and almost silver with fear, flew to the box in his hands. She didn't want a necklace; she didn't even want a tennis bracelet. Who knows what Devon had done to it. She shrugged. She would throw it away after work. She walked the few steps to where Booth was sitting and took the chair opposite him, when she usually would have taken the couch next to him. She noticed his eyes flickered, but she didn't want to know why.

Delicately taking the box from him, careful that their skin didn't touch, she lifted it from his grasp. For a moment she thought he was going to joke that he was contagious; she rarely avoided his touch now. She was getting sloppy. But he simply stared at the box, as if staring at her was too much. Covertly as she untied the ribbon she watched his face; he was tired. Dark circles smudged his skin under puffy, slatted brown eyes. His face was shaved, but not well and his shirt wasn't buttoned all the way. His hands, too, shook when he had handed her the box, ever so slightly, but for the nanosecond they were both holding the box she had felt it. He wasn't sleeping. She wanted to laugh. _Join the club._

Carefully now, she removed the lid as she thought about the last time they had been together; surly and quiet, Booth had taking her to the shooting range where he hadn't done very well. His peace of mind had seemed disquieted and he had kept glancing at her as if irked she were there. She had gone home feeling nauseated and pathetic. That night she had fallen asleep watching a horrible romantic comedy at three in the morning.

With a disgusted shriek, she dropped the box.

"Bones! What is it? What's wrong?" He darted forward to stare at the ground where her feet had been. They were now tucked tightly to her body. He reached for the box where it had landed face up as she heard other feet pounding towards her office.

"Dr. Brennan!" Hodgins gasped as he made it in the door, seconds ahead of Cam and Angela.

"What's the problem?" Cam asked immediately.

"What the…" Booth trailed off, staring in revulsion at the box in his hands. Neatly aligned the necklace cushioning was a tiny snake. It was dead. Painted along its scales were reddish brown hearts.

"Where did you get that?" Angela said in abhorrence.

"It came with her flowers," retaliated Booth, shaking his head and gently setting it on the coffee table. Sweets rushed in, tie askew, hair mussed, Daisy in tow.

"What's going on? What'd I miss – oh God, what is that?"

"The hearts look like they're painted in blood," observed Cam clinically.

"_Russ_ sent you this?" asked Booth, frowning, his gaze boring into hers.

"I never said the flowers are from Russ," Brennan snapped defensively. Booth's voice was quiet, dangerous.

"Who are they from?"

"Oh God, Brennan; you gave me your flowers. You said you didn't want them. I-" Angela trailed off as Booth's ferocious gaze snapped to her.

"She got another set of flowers?"

"She gave me her first bouquet," confessed Cam, attempting to draw Booth's wrath from Angela. It worked.

"And me," winced Daisy, cowering under Booth's murderous glare.

"Brennan," he growled, "why didn't you tell me? Is this a stalker? One of your fans?"

"He's definitely a fan," she grimaced.

"Is it Oliver Laureate?" She blinked impassively but noticed Sweets watching her closely; how perfectly irritating.

"I don't know who it is."

"She's lying," Sweets chimed but Booth rounded on him.

"I know she is!" He spat, "don't you think I know when Bones lies to me?" Brennan stood hurriedly.

"It's not a big deal Booth," she said her jaw clenching. "You're acting outrageously."

"Doctor Brennan, someone may be stalking you. He sent you a dead snake covered in blood." Cam's voice brook no argument. "I was a cop. That's stalking."

"How long has this been happening?" asked Sweets simultaneously as Brennan said,

"It's probably just a joke!" There was silence before both Booth and Sweets jumped on her semantics.

"So you know him? Personally?"

"Is it Pete?" gasped Angela.

"Wait, what?" asked Brennan bewilderedly, "No. NO. Just…What…" she swept the floor with her fingertips and scooped up a clear orange prescription bottle. She read the label.

Seeley Booth

Tranylcypromine

Caution: This Drug Contains

Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors

Brennan's mind raced quickly. Tranylcypromine was a common generic prescription for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Booth hadn't had PTSD for some time. His nightmares had been driven back with gambling. She paled. He had been unshaved, awake...was he gambling again? Following his dangerous addiction?

"Booth?" she asked questioningly, holding up the almost empty bottle. His mouth shut and his berating accusations ceased. "What are these? I thought you were done!" Cam was craning her neck to look as was Sweets but Brennan quickly passed the vial to Booth who crammed it back into his suit pocket.

"Well Bones," he all but snarled, brushing past her. "It looks like we both have secrets." Hurt and confused, she watched him go as he left her in a pit of sharks.

"We never have secrets," she whispered.

Then the sharks went for the kill, and she stood alone, watching her lifesaver float away in a seething rage.


	5. Cut Up My Candor

**Too dark? You decide. Let me know in reviews. But be warned; want a happy story? Check out my other one, or find one yourself. lol. Don't try making this a fluff, because it isn't and never will be. **

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Punching the bag in the gym ferociously really wasn't helping Booth's aggression and rage. Neither was the fluttering betting slips from a ring fight, the noise ringing in his ears only a few steps away. He grunted and beat the crap out of God knows who as he repeatedly smashed the bag over, and over, and over. His hands weren't taped; he could feel the bruises forming. He could feel the tiny fractures re-breaking. He grit his teeth and set his jaw and kept them coming, relishing the pain before with a final yell lost in the midst of the roars from the spectators, he stalked out of the gym; it was night, but he'd be back. He shot a murderous glance towards the friendly man who raised a hand to him in farewell.

Booth jogged back to his apartment, the hot blood running from the pain in his veins and to his head. He wanted to shower, zap some trash out of a frozen dinner in the microwave and then idly think about shooting up his television set while watching horrific programs before attempting to get a good nights sleep with his cold beer (fuck alcoholism) and pop his stupid Tranylcypromine that made the dreams foggy...the first time around.

Booth shoved the door opened more than unlocked it. There was a scraping from inside and Booth's reflexes weren't quick enough to pick up on the danger. He almost fell when Jared popped around a corner.

"Hey Seels? Hitting the gym pretty hard. I've been trying to catch you man."

"Sorry," grunted Booth, slinging his gym back next to the end of the couch. He winced as his now broken, littlest knuckles protested. Already he could see the bruises forming on the backs of them. "Jared, what are you doing here? I just wanted to shower and go to bed." Booth looked quickly around in trepidation; Jared hadn't opened any of his beer, and his pills were tucked safely out of sight in his sock drawer.

"I need your help." Booth froze, unsure of what he was asking, before Jared pulled out some binders. "I need to go through some photos for the wedding. Wanted your opinion before I stuck your ugly mug up on a big screen." Booth wiped a hand over his jaw.

"Sure, sure. Can I shower at least?"

"You look like crap!" called Jared at his retreating form, before the bathroom door slammed shut.

* * *

They both grinned and made murmuring sounds as Jared turned the pages of the album. Booth pointed at one.

"Hey look, there's that old car. Man I drove that thing until the wheel rims fell of and the transmission was dragging on the ground."

"Then I drove it," joked Jared. They were silent a little more, their eyes roving their young teenage faces.

"Wow Jar-head, we were so young."

"Got that right Seels."

"Remember you used to call me Cecilia? You'd make fun of my name."

"Well you'd make fun of my face," retaliated Jared.

"You had a freakishly large head as a kid," groused Booth, pointing to a picture. "Look, look at your head next to say- Pops." They both squinted at the grainy photo. Their late 80s haircuts were beginning to merge with the grunge and flannel look of the early 90s.

"Pops looks good here," observed Jared. "And you – look at you with that dumb ass long sleeve shirt on. Jesus, this had to be the middle of summer; I'm sweating and I'm in cutoffs and a wife beater. But you…you used to al-" he cut off awkwardly as he realized what he was saying.

"Yeah…well," coughed Booth. He rubbed his arms on his jeans.

"A year later you got your tats," said Jared, trying to lighten the mood. Booth's was spiraling darkly after he had almost been content at his brother's interruption from his brooding.

They were silent.

"Well, yeah, so I'll just put up the ones you picked out. Do you have any more recent ones? Ones in the lab?" It hung unspoken between them he meant ones with Brennan. Booth's jaw clenched.

"Can we do that later? Look, I'm really tired." Jared nodded slowly and stood up, gathering the binders.

"Sure Seels. Yeah. Whatever you want." His departure made Booth's disgusted quivering memories feel suddenly muggy. He wished there would be a rain to quench the burning, angry fire that was melting his shattered glass. The cracks in himself were welding irreparably; if he didn't get over these nightmares he wouldn't be the same. He could already feel them changing him, hurting him, breaking him. The windshield of a beautiful old corvette was shot up with bullets; Booth knew who the corvette was in the metaphor. He could even count the bullets: _Rebecca and Parker, Iraq, His Dad, Jared…Bones_. Poker chips were calling his name, a click away, or a subtle call to a few well-known connections he had picked up as an FBI agent. He ground his teeth and forced himself to open a beer civilly and turn on the television extra loud. That didn't stop his "superpowers" from working; Booth fell asleep on the couch, never making it to the bedroom to take his meds.

_He woke in a familiar place. He wanted to groan, to rage; this wasn't a dream. This was a memory. It wasn't fragmented but clear, concise and horrible. It was like finding a message in blood in the bathroom. Literally. _

_Booth swiveled around, looking for the protagonist…himself. Age 16. It was right before he had slept with…what was her name? Sally? Sarah? His first real physical relationship. Hormones had probably helped sway this memory and fold it neatly into repression. He avoided thinking about it without provocation; but Jared had kicked up the dust in a clear pool, and the little folded card had floated out and unfurled suspended in the clear water of his mind. _

_Here he was. Booth almost laughed/cried at his haircut; it was the very first years of the last decade of the 20__th__ century. 1991 or something such. His hair was a mess; it was long and curly, like Parker's cut, only he was sixteen, and not six. He could see the little cuts on his face around some acne where he had tried shaving, even if he couldn't grow a beard. He was already tall. He would only grow two or three inches more from his current circa six-foot stature. But Booth's amused details ceased when he saw the look on his own face; it was scared, ashamed…savage with a wild light. That light he had seen later on other snipers faces, one that he had never wanted on his own face. It was part of what had kept him alive out there; the absence of that delighted glee that was full of rage. It got people killed. _

_And they died laughing._

_His younger self glanced nervously about. Stripping off his shirt, he quickly tied it around the handle of the door and the faucet of the sink and stepped into the bathtub. Breathing fast now, Seeley unearthed the kitchen knife from where he had nicked it off a cutting board out of his back pocket. _

_Booth was panting hard as well. He tried to move forward, but he realized he was stuck in the frame of the mirror; able to see everything, but not able to leave the scene, able to warn the others, able to look away…_

_The first feints were made with short laughs and muttered curses. Booth cried out in time with young Seeley as the first, shallow, slice was made across the vein in one wrist. He could feel it burning there, lingering, this cut not leaving a scar. The pain was exhilarating. Seeley was grinning more broadly as he took control of the pain, mastered it, watched the red blood drip delightedly into the porcelain tub. _

_There was a knock._

"_Ce_seel_iaUH," sneered a young voice; Jared was only ten. _

"_Go away butt face," yelled Seeley. Booth winced. Butt face? Really? That's the best he could do? _

_The cuts were becoming deeper now, the blood spurting faster. Seeley was whimpering unconsciously, crying a bit. The door was shuddering under Jared. _

"_This door doesn't even lock! You jerk! You tied it shut again didn't you! You SUCK Seeley. I'm telling Pops."_

"_Don't," faltered Seeley, but his voice was weaker; the blood was saturating his jeans, spattering his not yet toned but slender body. His muscles stuck out like a young animals. "Don't," he called louder, but then with panic, began slicing more furiously. There was a pounding. _

"_Seeley. Seeley." It was Pops. Booth's mouth was dry as he watched himself covered in blood, leaning his head gently back, feeling the glow of the pain awash with the light headed pleasantry of dying. "Open the door boy. Answer me. Seeley! SEELEY!" There was a crash. There was the sound of a grunt. "I'll break it down!" warned Pops. "I swear to God!" There was another loud crash, while Booth whispered his mantra from the mirror in horror and fear_.

HurryPops.

_Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry._

_The receiving end of a sledgehammer busted over the knob and a semi gnarled hand reached inwards and ripped the cloth from off the faucet. _

"_Seeley Booth," he began in a rage, but gasped in horror at what he found; it didn't matter to Seeley. _

_There was no need to hurry. _

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Booth awoke to the sound of an infomercial and stared blearily at the information the menu was telling him on the screen. It was 3:45. A decent nights sleep. Booth absentmindedly rubbed his wrists. He couldn't feel the scars there, at least, not under his fingertips. Maybe he could feel them more deeply, with something else inside of him.

That year after his near death had been life changing. Living with Pops was worth it when he saw his Grandfather cry when he graduated. All the years of living with Pops since Seeley was 13 and Jared 7 came to a culmination that year; Pops and Seeley grew closer than ever. Seeley began taking his Catholicism seriously. When he enlisted, he cast Seeley aside with his shorn hair for his army cut, and from then on his companions called him simply: Booth.

Booth rubbed a hand over his face and poured himself more lemonade while sitting alone at his kitchen table. Jared had left the photograph for him. He took it in his hands, staring hard at the faces of a sixteen year old boy and his kid brother. Jared, at least, looked happy. Booth sighed and rubbed his abdomen. He felt…cathartic…released a little, but still pent up, as if he were getting a Divine message on his radio transceiver that said, "Here's what happened. Go tell someone." If he was honest with himself, he knew whom he should be talking to. No one knew him like she did; her judgments were always valid, and always made him feel better.

Staring at his wrists now, the black markings of _Soul_ and _Destiny_ etched into his skin to cover the scars that were invisible now, he sighed heavily. For the first time in a long time, he went to bed willingly.

But he popped a pill on the way.

Just in case.


	6. Breakable Girls and Boys

Brennan took a deep breath. Booth was avoiding her. She didn't blame him; she was growing more and more testy with the increasing threat of Devon encroaching on her life and the utter lack of sleep. For the past three days, she had been up every single minute of those 72 hours. Angela noticed; so did Cam.

"Dr. Brennan, when was the last time you slept?" she queried when Brennan tripped for the third time over a tray of instrument tools; at least this time they didn't go crashing to the floor.

"Brennan, seriously, you're starting to worry me. What's wrong? Is it that stalker of yours?"

"No, Ang, I told you, the last I heard of that creep was with the snake." Brennan was unused to lying; it grated on her nerves and hurt her already pounding head. Truth be told, she had been receiving letters every day. Not letters exactly but rather photos in unmarked envelopes in the mail. They were all of her. One was of her getting into Booth's car, another taking a bite of vegan ice cream at a little café she had found, the third was her laughing and stealing a French fry from Booth. He was also in many of the other pictures, holding her arm, guiding her back, steering her elbow, touching her hair. She had been shocked initially, not by the creepiness of the photos, but rather the amount of everyday touching she had Booth accomplished; she used to be vigilant about people being in her personal space. Now she felt hurt when he didn't walk right next to her and guide her by the small of her back.

Then the fear factor had settled uncomfortably in her stomach. She knew that wherever she was, Devon was nearby; it scared her. He could potentially hurt her. Especially through her friends.

Booth was more distant than ever; his eyes were clouded with something foreign Brennan was not used to seeing there. It had taken her days to place it before panic had curled warmly up, as unwelcome a houseguest as the dread: it was pain. When he looked at her, when he looked at the diner, when he looked at a flower, or even at nothing at all, the pain was there pounding a headache between his furrowed brows and putting a distant, strained edge on his voice that drew attention to the dark bruising circles under his eyes.

"Bones," his usual bounding step was a slow thump that matched her heart; his upbeat cheery call was now an unwanted mandate, summoning her into his scrutiny. They had hardly talked, and what little talk flowed between them was sparse and case-related. She desperately wanted to ask about his medication, and she could see that there were moments, breaths of bated air that hung between them like the pause before the candles are extinguished on a birthday cake, but they always passed uneventfully. Brennan was upset not so much at her stalker, but at the apparent and acute lack of her best friend. He was there for her; but he wasn't _there_ for her. She gritted her teeth. She should have never let him ingratiate himself into her life like that. She had been fine before he had come along. She swallowed and looked up from her work.

"Booth," she returned, as civilly as he could. "What is it? A new lead?" His eyes immediately went to her clenched hands encased in gloves. His presence had saved her from answering both Angela and Cam's querying looks and concerned complaints about her recent behavior from inadequate sleep.

"Easy there Bones," he said, some of the warmth creeping back into his tone, looking shocked, "You're shaking."

"Am not," she said reflexively.

"Are too," he fired back.

"What is the matter with you lately Brennan? You're all off beat since that creep sent you flowers." Angela scoffed.

"It's hardly the first time I've had a rabid fan, and since I haven't returned any form of contact, he has desisted," Brennan protested. Cam nodded the affirmative.

"It's true Booth," Cam said evenly, still unsure if she was treading into a lightning field, "Dr. Brennan says that he hasn't bothered her for days."

"But she hasn't been sleeping well," put in Angela, which made Brennan want to scream with frustration at her meddling.

"Neither has Booth," sniped Brennan and Cam simultaneously. Booth glowered and Brennan felt herself shrink under his glare.

"What's wrong? Why haven't you been sleeping?" He growled.

She leveled a piercing look back at him, or rather what she hoped was piercing, but really felt more like a painful, twisted insight into her agony. "I could ask you the same question," she sniffed haughtily. His jaw clenched.

"I don't like your tone Bones," said Booth.

"I dislike that you doubt me," returned Brennan.

"What?" snapped Booth, "I'm not allowed to be concerned for my partner?" Brennan was shaking harder now.

"You don't trust me," she spat back. Cam and Angela were slowly backing away, uncomfortably, but also vaguely relieved that Brennan had finally dropped her pretense of normality and the two were talking again.

"_I_ don't trust _you?_ You didn't even tell me you had a stalker! Weren't you freaked out?"

"Hardly," shrugged Brennan. Booth opened his mouth in a way that suggested they were about to have full blown scream fight when a messenger with a package interrupted.

"Package for Dr. Brennan," said the woman in a bored tone. Brennan half raised her hand. Signing for the package and alternately glancing at it and at Booth, she tossed it viciously on the examining table, neatly missing a skeletal foot. He glared daggers at her as she turned away.

"Open it." His voice was soft, dangerous. Brennan looked up in surprise; while she had heard and relished this tone he used against criminals in interrogation, it scored her heart that he would use it against her.

"I'll open it later," she casually shrugged, trying to be her usual collected self. Inwardly, her heart was pounding a hundred beats a minute. She had no idea of the audacious lengths that Devon would go to. She hadn't counted on Booth.

"Open it," he snarled, starting forward; she didn't mean to, she didn't have time to control her reaction. She flinched as if he were going to strike her. His anger immediately faded and he looked helplessly at his hands. "Bones," he began in a pained whisper, and she could see the agony ripping at his heart, she just didn't know what it was.

"Fine, I'll open it," she said hastily, trying to distract him from his aggressive advance. Someone handed her scissors and she carefully, and with bated breath, opened the box. She gingerly looked inside and pulled out the first thing her hands came in contact with; Booth snatched the black binder from her, flipping it open. It looked to be a photo album. The first page was a note:

_Rancy, _

_It seems you didn't like those other pictures I sent you. So I decided to up the game. _

_Devon_

Booth's breathing patterns hitched and abruptly changed; Brennan craned to see before Booth literally flung the entire thing at her, his rage piqued and white hot. She gingerly looked at the pictures as he began screaming inanely in the background; she was surprised he didn't take his gun out and shoot her, the book and the entire box. But when she saw the pictures, her heart stopped.

They were all pictures of her; but they weren't taken from a distance. On the contrary the first few pages were of her getting undressed in her apartment. She blushed dully at one where her breasts were clearly visible in profile as she arched her back while waiting for her shower to heat. But the next pictures were worse; they were pictures of her in her childhood, pictures she had lost. She swallowed. She had found them now. There were baby pictures, pictures of her as a child, teenage pictures of her and Russ. They were all burned. Her arms, her legs, sometimes even her head had been melted with a match as a sort of symbolic horror. The last one was of her and Devon, taken at an amusement park. His pudgy, fat rolls looked even whiter than her own skin in direct sunlight. He was laughing in the picture. She was crying.

She was crying now.

"What the _hell_ Bones! What the _fuck!_ You said you didn't know this guy, and here he is with a million pictures of you as a kid, as a teen – and who the hell is the guy in the back, and what does _Rancy_ mean?"

"Brennan," Angela's voice was filled with trepidation; "There's more in the box." With dread, Brennan stood slowly up and shuffled to the box to peer inside; swallowing, she pulled out a human skull and set it gently on the table. The next was worse; inside was a stuffed bird – the kind taxidermists create – sitting happily in a cage made of human rib bones. The note on the bottom of the cage simply said:

_I know you're really into bones. Bought these for you. _

Brennan stepped away, nauseated. It was probably the first time she had ever been nauseated by human remains; even genocide had its order and reason. She sat, trembling on a chair. Somewhere far beyond her waking mind, she could still hear Booth screaming inane curses, railing her for her stupidity, her selfishness and her complete lack of mistrust in him. He seemed to calm down, however, when he noticed her pale, drawn face, collapsed in a chair on the lab platform.

"Hey," he said softly, watching her closely the way he always did. There was his beautiful face again, inches too close for societal standards. She couldn't help but smile a tiny bit at his delicious smell that rolled off of him, his tiny answering smile that warmed her heart; she could feel her seams ripping. Devon was hacking crudely at them with scissors. Booth quickly put his hands on her forearms. She blinked in bewilderment; he always knew exactly how to hold her together. She knew she was shaking under his hands, but for once, he didn't comment on her weakness.

"Hey…we'll find him. We can stop this. Do you know who he is? You must know who he is."

Her mouth opened but no sounds came out. She swallowed. She couldn't seem to remember how to speak words; right now they seemed unimportant compared to her organs shaking out her sides, or her brains spilling out of her ears – although that was completely preposterous and scientifically inaccurate.

"Foster," she choked and his eyes widened.

"Your _brother_," Booth groaned. "That's how he signed all the flowers." Brennan was so ashamed she couldn't look at him. Standing hurriedly up, she brushed past him on wobbly legs and picked up the skull; it was cracked in a million places, like someone had hit it with a sledgehammer. She squeezed her fingers slightly, trying not to let it bob and weave in her vision as her arms and hands shook uncontrollably. A loud snap broke out and she fell backwards as the skull shattered into a hundred pieces from her tight grip. She stumbled, and skidding on a larger piece of the skullcap, she fell, watching Booth's horrified face before feeling a dull crack radiate up her jawbone as she hit the examining table behind her.

Booth was rushing forward; but even he couldn't save her from the blackness that swam into her vision with such finality, it had all the permanence of a dungeon door slamming shut.


	7. Just Someone's Anonymous Anguish

**Surprise surprise - this chapter was actually written far, far before any of the logistics of the story emerged. It grew out of nothing and took my breath away; I of course had to add touches here and there to help it mesh, but it's actually close to untouched from the beginning. Let me know what you think of course - I value reviews! **

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Booth felt as if he were swimming up from one of his horrible nightmares; the car ride, the ambulance, the arrival of both Brennan's father and her brother all seemed directly surreal. He wasn't sure how major of a concussion she had, but all he knew was that people kept squeezing his arm so hard it rather hurt and mumbling inane things about her being "fine." His jaw clenched. Goddamn she wasn't fine. He had advanced on her and she had slipped; that sickening crunch had so echoed like the first shattering of the skull between her hands out of the Goddamn box. She never fell, not once. Hardly stumbled, if ever. Her grace was somewhat unnerving, her calm never ruffled. Booth wanted to punch something, but his eyes were on the very dull eyes of his partner; she had been awake for several minutes but unresponsive to their questions. The doctor had cautioned them to wait and to be prepared for her not to remember at first. Booth would wait for her until the end of time; she had been there when he had woken up, dazed and confused. Her eyes followed his desperate pacing and she made a croaking sound like she needed water. He immediately bounded forward, afraid yet so terribly in love with her it was burning at all the cracks in his soul; he was afraid that she had just punched another bullet hole into him, or at least ground hers bigger, wider and more fragmented.

"Don't," whimpered Brennan, curling away from him, cringing against the crisp white sheets. Booth's face froze in horror.

"Bones," he said softly, taking a step toward her; she shuddered away. His hand reached for her and she cried softly in horror.

"Don't!" she shrieked. "Don't touch me. Stay away. Stay away!" Tears, real tears were leaking from her blanched milk white face as she shuddered.

"Bones what's wrong?"

"Don't touch me," she sobbed. "Russ! Russ? Where's Russ?" He was by her side immediately, stroking her face.

"I'm here Tempe, I'm here. What's wrong?"

"Don't. I'm so scared and I hurt, I hurt all over."

"Bones, hey easy," said Booth stepping towards her again. She screamed, a blood curdling piercing cry that Russ tamped a hand over.

"She doesn't want you Booth," he said coldly, viciously. Booth froze in his tracks, watching her scared, petrified, young face staring in absolute terror at him; the last time he had seen a look so forcibly was through a cross hairs of his weapon as a man crumpled in front of his son on his birthday. He swallowed.

"Bones…" he whispered.

"Stay back Booth!" warned Russ, "Seriously, just back off."

"Russ," whimpered Brennan, "Russ I'm cold." He vainly tried to rub his hands over her arms as she sobbed into the sheets. Her sobs were broken and animal- Booth wondered how she walked with sobs like that always ripping inside of her. He then remembered he still got up some mornings. There were so many days when he was brave too, when he felt like that shatterglass windshield on that beautiful vintage car was wavering, and may collapse in a big cloud of dust if he wasn't careful. He often wasn't careful; not around Brennan, but she was the only one who seemed to be able to glue parts of him back together.

"Russ," Brennan fitfully called. He gave her a half smile.

"Marco," he said softly. She didn't answer. His smile faded and slipped from his face as if she had slapped him with her next words.

"Russ, where's Mom?"

"Tempe?" his voice was uncertain. Booth swallowed a hot, hard lump in his throat. He stood, rooted solidly in place.

"I want Mom," she cried, "where is she?"

"Tempe…" Russ' voice was agony. His eyes flashed to Booth but Booth refused silently.

"Where's Mom?" the scared little girl asked again; this was a 10 year olds voice coming from a woman more than three times her age. "Or Dad…where's dad?"

"I'm here sweetheart." Booth was obliged to move for Max as he moved quickly to his daughter's side. His face was tender, open; the antithesis of his usual expression of cunning.

"Where's Mom?" sobbed Temperance. Max's face fell.

"She died."

"What?" she was quiet in disbelief.

"You found her…Temperance," interjected Booth, her first name foreign on his lips; but this wasn't Bones, not his Bones. This wasn't even Brennan. This was Tempe and a young girl unknown to him.

"I found her?" she asked, her voice blank, no longer a child. Booth ignored the glares from both Russ and Max as he took one step, just one, forward.

"Four years ago Bones. You found her in limbo…in Bone Storage. At the Jeffersonian."

"The Jeffersonian institute." She stated it as a fact. "I work there at the institute in the medico-legal lab. We work in conjunction with the Smithsonian in identifying historical artifacts and, colloquially termed, mummies." He recognized her spiel as the same one she gave out at press conferences and book signings, so deeply ingrained into her memory the way the doxology or the Apostle's Creed was into his.

"You're a doctor," supplied Russ, catching to Booth's game.

"I have a doctorate Russ," she snapped, "it's hardly the same thing."

"Atta girl," smiled her father. "That's my Tempe."

"Dad?" she turned her face to him, and Booth felt like they were at square one.

"What is it sweetheart?"

"Why did you leave?" she sighed, and Booth could feel her soul weighing the entire question down. Max's eyebrows furrowed.

"It's a long story honey."

"I can keep up," she insisted, "I am quite intelligent. I was best in all of my classes and went to graduate school early on mostly all merit based scholarships." Booth was caught off guard by this pretentious hybrid of young Temperance and his regular Brennan.

"Your mother and I…"

"They were bank robbers Tempe," interjected Russ. His father glared witheringly at him.

"I _know_, Russ," she said in irritation, "that's not my question."

"Her question was," said Booth in a low voice as he took another step closer to the foot of the bed, "Why didn't you come back? After knowing it was safe? You had 15 years of chances. She became an adult – why didn't you come back for her?"

"Yes," said Brennan, and it was Brennan again, looking as out of place in a hospital bed as she had broken and in a sheeted nightgown after her brush with death in New Orleans. "Yes," she repeated, "Booth said exactly what I wanted to say." Booth's heart swelled.

Max eyed Booth keenly; he was obviously uncomfortable with him hearing their history.

"He stays," commanded Brennan, "I'll just tell him anyway."

"She will," confirmed Booth with a cocky grin and a hitch to his belt buckle. For a shining instant, she was back, his Bones, there looking at him.

"We left," sighed Max in a wash of consternation and anger mixed with something much more ancient – pain, perhaps, or even regret. "And we stayed away. We had a lot of adventures, your mother and I," said Max softly, "and even though I'm not into God, Christine was. She prayed every night for you two. We called," his voice didn't quite hitch, but Booth focused his gaze away from his face out of manly respect nevertheless, "we called those days our Comic Book days. The days of fighting crime instead of committing it. We moved around, we felt like spies. We came across a lot of our old friends," Max's face hardened and he fell silent. "We couldn't drag you into it." Brennan turned her face into her pillow.

"Go away," she whispered and Max stood stock still.

"Excuse me?"

"Go away," she groaned more forcibly. "I don't need you." Max's face and Russ' voice echoed the same tenuous hope.

"But we're family Tempe." Her body convulsed and she shuddered.

"I've built myself a new family," she whispered, "And you didn't come back."


	8. Hear My Horror and Hide

**Sorry it took so long! Not only was it my birthday, but angst it much harder to write than fluff; it demands more of yourself and it sometimes is draining. Enjoy this hard fought chapter. As always - reviews are presents!**

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The awkward silence hanging between the Brennan family was cheerfully interrupted by a portly older doctor with a handlebar mustache and rosy cheeks. Brennan managed to notice that Booth smiled a tight smile of welcome while Max, scowling, stepped aside to reveal his daughter. The doctor's eyebrows lifted as he smiled genially at her. In response, Brennan's face drained completely of blood. She felt herself regress once more into a child, despite her best efforts to remain calm and rational. She thought this day would never come; she had often longed for it over the years and rehearsed her speech a thousand times. Now that it was here, her mouth was too dry and her heart too loud.

"Temperance," chortled the man, "It has been a long time."

"Excuse me?" said Russ in thick disbelief. Brennan felt her neck strain and she realized she was unconsciously pushing her head as deeply backwards as it could go into her pillow.

"Dr. Greerson," she managed to whisper. She could feel Booth's eyes devouring her face hungrily, a window previously sealed shut was being pried open, some of her tight bundled stitches were being frayed.

"Temperance Brennan," smiled the doctor, "you've grown up well."

"Excuse me," Max's words were polite but his tone anything but. "How do you know my daughter?"

"_Your_ daughter?" blinked the man in surprise. Max's face grew menacing.

"Yes, _my_ daughter."

"I was unaware Temperance's parents were alive."

"Just me," said Max calmly; Brennan still shivered as if he had snarled. "And you are…?" He asked it delicately, but Booth winced.

"I'm Dr. Ted Greerson, and Temperance was my foster daughter for some time." Max turned his brimstone glare from the doctor to Russ who was looking positively green. "You've really grown into a fine young woman Temperance," he continued, beaming at her jovially. She could hardly make eye contact; she saw Booth shift menacingly, he could always tell when she was coming apart at the seams.

"This has been lovely, but Brennan here needs her rest," inserted Booth. Russ butted in.

"Yes, maybe you could catch up another time." Dr. Greerson's smile never faltered, but Brennan saw it change as easily from night to day.

"And you are?" Russ bristled.

"I'm her brother."

"Interesting," he sounded completely uninterested. "I wasn't aware, Temperance, that you were split from your brother."

"I wasn't," she barely whispered. At the same time as Russ said,

"Oh, I wasn't in Foster Care."

"Why not?" the question came from two men; Max and Dr. Greerson both looked at Russ with varying degrees of inquiry and blatant anger. Booth stepped between them.

"Look doc, I don't mean to be rude but Bone- I mean Temperance is really tired." Dr. Greerson blinked.

"Of course. Are you her-"

"Partner," blurted Brennan, terrified he would leave her alone with this…man. She suddenly was glad that she hadn't successfully driven off her family. She saw Booth swell a bit but didn't have the heart to insert a qualifier or else he might leave her here alone. She closed her eyes briefly. She was so tired of them leaving.

"Temperance," said a voice, and her eyes flew open to realize Dr. Greerson was checking her vitals, prodding her head and reading her chart. His voice was low, quick, almost too much so to catch. "Temperance," he said again, "this thing with Devon, you know he means well. He's just a confused boy. He's-"

"He's stalking her," Booth's voice cut in as smooth as butter and sharp as glass, bristling against the back of the doctor and quickly stitching up some of Brennan's larger holes of terror.

"Honey, someone is stalking you?" asked Max in shock.

"It's not stalking," Dr. Greerson snapped. He took a calming breath and attempted to put back on his fatherly tone and jovial mask. "Temperance – you remember Devon right? You remember our vacations. He loved you very much."

"Too much," she whispered, unsure if she had the strength for this. She glanced around, but there was her constant – her Booth, the tailor of her messy life. There was also her brother and father, holes that went missing but were slowly being patched back into place; a little mismatched, but tougher than before. "He liked me too much." Her voice suddenly flooded with hate. "All those late night _chats_," she spat. "You heard them. You heard _me_."

"Come, come," said Dr. Greerson panicking slightly, "I don't know what you are talking about. He was simply your foster brother-"

"My brother?" Brennan all but screamed derisively, "You're the one who shoved your wife's cover up into my hands at breakfast before the bus. You watched me wear ace bandages, knowing my ribs were broken. You saw the bite marks," her voice broke. "You saw…and you heard him…" she trailed off, staring into her 'father's' eyes, and then avoiding her true father's eyes out of blatant shame, her own ice blue ones full of contempt and hate, and even fear, "You heard me. And you didn't come." With an almost wordless roar of rage, Max stood, and shoved the doctor.

"Dad," Russ shouted, "Dad it wasn't him. It was his creep of a son."

"He sent her flowers…at first," said Booth in a low tone, and Brennan's scared but ashamed eyes flicked to his. He had never stopped watching her, not once flickered away in disgust, just uninterrupted agony. He looked so tired; she felt like Pandora, opening her black little box- one of a thousand, adding this weight to his already bowed back. Booth continued.

"Then there was a dead snake covered in blood." Russ made a disgusted noise and Max grew even more deadly silent, staring at Booth. Dr. Greerson was slunk in a corner, too terrified to leave under Max's predatorial gaze. With a sharp jerking motion of his hand, Max gestured at Booth to continue. Booth's own brow furrowed and darkened.

"Then came the photos." Brennan felt the hot tears always slinking about her gut, the ones making her slightly nauseated, leak slowly over her beautifully arched cheekbones. She held her head up high.

"They were…" Booth swallowed with a face that looked as if he had swallowed a year's worth of vomit, "provocative…disgusting." Brennan felt a hammer smash into her, breaking all her ribs at once, leaving her swollen, beating heart on display. Booth thought her disgusting? Oblivious to her agony, Booth continued, slowly detailing Devon's crimes.

"The emails were first," she whispered hoarsely, "before the flowers."

"He tried to get in touch," put in Dr. Greerson, "civilly."

"The creepy song on the radio," said Brennan stiltedly, feeling as if she were the one confessing a crime, weak that she couldn't hide it better.

"Damn," swore Booth. His face dawned in understanding. "Rancy? From Tempe-_rance_." Max gave a curt nod of recognition.

"Anything else?" he asked coldly, and Brennan felt her bloody mess of a body arch slightly off the bed, as if he held her heartstrings like a fishing line and was rowing away, reeling her after him. She recognized the tone. He was doing the unthinkable.

And without a word, Max left.

"No!" she screamed a cry of agony that was hardly human. "Dad please. Don't leave me! God, don't leave me. Not here. Not….not with him." She fell back onto the pillow, her heartstring snapped again and she wearily coiled it back inside herself, unsure if she could tie it back together again. And again. Russ moved forward carefully as Booth roughly escorted the doctor out of the room and went to the nurses' station to request a new one out of conflict of interest.

"Tempe," said Russ. His voice sounded strained; she realized that he probably felt every bit more guilty than she did for leaving her to this situation.

"It's not your fault Russ," she said in exhaustion.

"No, Russ, it is," snapped Booth, returning. "I never liked you much, but this is just too far. _You_ did this." Russ' face fell and Brennan knew she had to pick a side. What hurt her already broken heart is that it wasn't even a choice. Blood was thicker than water they said.

But Booth was her lifeblood, and Russ was a stranger who didn't even come at Christmastime.

"I won't leave you Tempe," he swore beneath his breath to her. She looked at him, her heart suddenly empty, gladly surrendering control back to her familiar head. Fat lot of good it ever did to let her heart drive – she should know better by now.

"Are you sure about that?"

And his face looked as if she had slapped him.


	9. Heartbeat Heartache

She was watching him. He could feel her eyes studying him as he grumbled and forced his neck the other way.

"You don't have to stay Booth, the doctor on the night shift is coming to round on me. I am cognizant. I'll probably be released and just go home."

"Exactly," he grunted, punching the lumpy mattress as he leaned his head on it from sitting in the armchair by her bed. "I'll drive you home."

It was closely approaching midnight; Russ had left, or rather slunk away gratefully around 10:00 pm when it appeared that the new doctor was professional and apathetic to such a light trauma, and Brennan was getting discharged in a matter of hours.

"That's not necessary." He winced; her voice had taken on that dead tone she spoke in when confessing her sordid past, especially with Devon. Booth wasn't exactly sure of the extent of the abuse, but he sure as hell wasn't going to ask.

"It is necessary," he snarled, finally shoving away from the bed and flopping into the armchair before modulating his tone. "Sorry," he wiped a hand over his face, feeling his gritty skin snag on his hand from the stubble that was shadowing his jawline.

"You look tired," she said it in that absurd matter of fact tone, as if she should be advising him. As if he were in the hospital and not the other way around.

"How's your head?" he deflected. She frowned.

"Fine," she chewed a lip and he sighed before unwillingly taking the bait.

"What?"

"Well," she chewed a little harder and Booth dragged his hands through his hair.

"What?"

"You look tired."

"What?"

"Is it the memories?"

"What?" Booth was so shocked he didn't have time to answer right as the clock chimed midnight on the irritating ticking clock against the wheat colored walls and a very tired looking doctor waltzed in. She quickly glanced at Brennan's heart rate monitor.

"Your heart rate got very high a few hours ago," she frowned. "Did anything distress you? These are unusually high readings." Brennan opened her mouth and only a tiny little croak came out. Her eyes flicked to Booth, who was glowering that she had so easily seen through his secrets.

"I ran into an old friend," she said honestly. Booth nodded grudgingly.

"Emotional," he coughed out. Brennan glared at him in both hurt, shame and anger for his quick summation of her pain.

"Well then, don't do that anymore," smiled the doctor. Or rather, she attempted to smile; Booth knew that empty, hollow look. Doctors and soldiers shared more in common than people believed. The dead look of their exhausted faces was only matched by watching people die day by day.

"She won't," nodded Booth seriously, for once reaching out and trying to make this doctor's life easier. She breathed a sigh of relief under his wordless gaze, and Booth suddenly felt more like himself than he had in three months.

"Then I declare you discharged. I'll send a nurse in here to give you the paperwork. Your husband here can take you home."

"Partner," corrected Brennan weakly, at her quickly retreating back . Booth stared at her.

"What?" he said, very softly. She knew what he was speaking of. He could see it in her eyes. It was like the interruption had never occurred.

"I guessed," she confessed softly. "I saw you having a nightmare."

"They're just nightmares," he shrugged.

"You're on medication," she whispered, and the only thing in the room beside their sleekly slithering confidences were the loud hum of the ticking clock and the irritating beep of her heart monitor.

"Aw Bones," he tried to brush it off, but unexpectedly she grabbed his hand where it sat on the arm of his chair.

"Don't lie to me Booth," she said earnestly, her eyes entreating. And looking at her, he found he couldn't.

"What?" he begged brokenly. "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing. I just want my partner back. He's been…missing." Her mouth twisted wryly. "And people think I stink at reading people…which I do," she mused. But her words became serious and the insistent beeping of her heart rate accelerated. "But you haven't been here." Booth's breath stopped; he had tried so hard to fake it. He hadn't fooled her for a minute. "You changed up all your habits. You shower in the morning…and at night. You don't come over anymore. I don't come over. We don't go to the diner. I never see you. Car rides are silent." Her voice hitched as she drew the conclusion. "You're leaving."

He heard the desperation and laced agony in her voice which accelerated her heart rate until the loud beeping was filling his ears and the room like a medical drama before someone flatlined.

"Bones, hey, hey, easy." He was suddenly standing over her, grasping her forearms, their foreheads descending until he was touching her hair, her neck, squeezing her hands in a last ditch attempt to comfort her. "Easy, we got to slow down your heart rate or you'll never bust outta here." She laughed a little laugh that sounded like a sob and he felt his windshield buckle and bow under her cracked façade.

"Come home with me tonight," he offered out of the blue, surprising himself more than her. "I'll keep an eye on you."

"My concussion has passed," she said primly, her eyes dry but her face still looking as if she were going to cry.

"I'll keep you safe," he promised, but he didn't have to specify from what…or who. She implicitly understood.

"That's not necessary," she said weakly. But he could tell she was tempted by the idea.

"Okay, just one night…or not the whole night. It's half over anyway." He felt his weary face crack into his familiar half grin that had her answering timid smile. His mind raced. How did he miss this? How did he let Bones slide him by? His insides hurt thinking about how much agony he had ignored because he had been too selfish to notice.

"Your hand!" she gasped suddenly, turning his hand over in her palm. He winced as her thumbs brushed over the broken littlest knuckles from boxing. Purpling yellow bruises spanned his knuckles. Clinically she read him like a book; he laughed on the inside. She thought he could read her; he did. But it was a fair trade. Her face frowned. "You hit something? These are broken."

"Yeah, well," laughed Booth, but the laughter turned to ash in his throat at her unhappy features. "I boxed at the gym. Without gloves."

"Please say just the bag." He nodded.

"I didn't hit anyone." His face still twisted and she still saw it. She cupped his face and turned it up toward her in the light. His mouth went dry at her touch; he was glad that _he_ wasn't hooked up to a heart rate monitor.

"Dark circles," she whispered, "bad shave. You're not eating. You're not sleeping."

"I'm working out," he defended weakly. "I go to work."

"You look awful," she stated flatly. He frowned and some of their tired banter raised its weary head.

"Are you kidding? I look great. You should see my-"

"Booth," she laughed weakly. They were interrupted by a nurse handing a clipboard to Brennan. Little did they know she had been secretly watching their contact, her heart twinging at their incandescent love pouring between them. Little did she know it was completely oblivious.

Still bitching at the wheelchair, Booth rolled his partner to his car, and took her home. He told himself it was for her benefit, to keep her safe. He knew better. It was to keep him safe.

Safe from himself.


	10. Snipe At the Sniper

**Okay, wow this took so long to update, I feel like a horrible person. I get so tempted to write fluff in the middle of angst though...just know this could have easily turned another direction. **

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"You're upset," he accused, and Brennan felt her eyes fly open. Both in shock and in an attempt to revive herself from her semi-stupor, she blindly reached for the water bottle Booth always kept in the car for her. She put it to her lips to gain time.

In truth, she had been worried about Devon. About how he might react if Booth took her home…or worse, practically moved in. The partners had slept over before, but this was different. They were both on edge, she realized: both raw. She tucked her hands more firmly against her ribs, not wanting him to see her unraveling. She hated that uncanny ability of his to always tell when she was off sorts; it both irked her and caused her no end of gratification for not having to vocalize her feelings. Now it seemed she would have to.

She swallowed the remaining water she had held in her mouth until it had become tepid. That was the biggest problem; she wasn't entirely sure what she was feeling. She snorted lightly to herself. She was lying and she knew it. Brennan was a stranger to the slick, cold feeling that frosted her insides as it slithered around like a snake but she had written about it countless times. The fear had grown, from a niggling sensation or a tapeworm to a full-blown python of terror. The emails had been irritating at best, almost laughably fearful at worst. Brennan had been more irked at her bursting inbox than anything. The song was worse…how had he known what station she and Booth were listening to? Or how to so perfectly time it? The flowers had also been more of an irritation than trepidation, although the snake had been a gruesome little shock. The pictures, though, had actually terrified and disgusted her. By the time she had gotten to the bird stuffed into the ribcage of bones, she knew that her fear had plateaued. Strange as it may have seemed to Booth or Angela, although the bones and the skull were a disgusting sort of love note, the stalking pictures…the camera lens trained on her shower, on her car, on her footsteps as she tried to jiggle open the door frightened her more than anything else put together.

He was watching her.

And she was powerless to stop him.

And relinquishing that power was killing her.

She could feel herself falling apart, the scraps of a hastily patched together life, carefully embroidered into a fancy new one, were peeling away. But the most terrifying problem was her own selfishness.

"Bones?" Booth hemmed again, confused at her long silence. "You got lost there? It wasn't a question…or even rhetorical."

"Yes I'm upset," she conceded and he nodded once curtly in recognition of his abilities.

"But not only about…" she cleared her throat, "about Devon." The hitch in her voice was a mistake, one she should have swallowed. He looked murderously angry.

"Bones, what could you possibly be angr-" he stopped, his knuckles tightening on the steering wheel before he hissed in agony at the broken ones. He wrenched and wrestled the SUV into a compact car parking space in his building lot. She was too tired to even try to point out the error of his ways.

"This isn't necessary Booth," she said half-heartedly.

"Oh, it is," he said, his voice too grim; she felt like he meant something else.

They walked to his door in uncomfortable silence, the raw tension brushing between them like an unwelcome house cat, begging for a scrap of their broken lives. He opened the lock, and Brennan held her breath, not sure of what waited inside. For all she knew, Devon could have orchestrated an elaborate trap, or left a present for Booth, or…

The door creaked open slowly, and she realized her radiating worry must have been picked up by Booth's completely inaccurate radar of emotion, for he too, was standing rigidly, pushing open the door to his own apartment as if afraid another fridge bomb would explode. He didn't draw his gun, but pushed her back with stiff fingertips, his face suddenly far away. Brennan didn't have to be a genius to figure out that her partner was no longer and FBI agent but rather a soldier. He had blindly shoved her behind him, and Brennan couldn't even muster the energy to be flustered at his big hand cupping her breast accidentally. With bated breath, she tripped lightly behind him as he stalked from room to room, his arm cocked and stiff, as if ready to draw his weapon.

She stood quietly in the middle room in front of the couch; he didn't call _clear_, but rather yanked open the fridge and grabbed…one beer. She couldn't help but sigh in frustration when she saw the barren wasteland of takeout and empty beer bottles. Her partner had been hurting and even she could have figured it out with one eye blind.

"Guess there's just one left," he called gruffly, tossing it to her on the couch. She caught it neatly; feeling accomplished with her natural athletic ability, she sank slowly into the couch cushions. With an unsociable grunt she knew came from Booth feeling uncomfortable, he threw himself down next to her. He pressed a button on a remote several times before she pried a cylindrical round object from under her thigh and held it up questioningly. Booth made a sour face and tossed the battery-less remote onto a nearby chair.

Although his arm lay draped across the back of the couch, the position was strained, and she sat rigidly. Within seconds of her noticing, he withdrew his arm onto a knee. With her analytical mind working at hyper speed in order to avoid the ringing silence, she noticed the rumpled blanket at the end of the couch, the stains from food and the heap of clothes by her feet. Booth's couch was hardly comfortable and Brennan could not fathom why he would choose to sleep on it (as the evidence pointed to) instead of in his own bed.

The silence stretched elastically.

"How's your head?" he finally asked, and the silence whooshed from the room, leaving only a very unwelcome elephantine rage simmering between the two.

"I'm fine," she snapped pettily, unsure of why she felt she was being antagonized. It could be the smug little smile on his face, the one that didn't reach his glaring eyes. Or it could be his cocky, self assured attitude as his gaze possessively swept her face, knowing everything about her and gloating, making her feel like little more than an object.

"Well Dr. Greerson was just _lovely_," nodded Booth, but there was an undercurrent. "But not quite as lovely as Max leaving." Brennan felt a flash of pain, as if he had ground a knife into her bruised heart that had been ripped from her crushed chest and put on display back in the hospital. He knew exactly what to say to make her bleed out her soul full of holes.

"Don't say it like that," she sniped back. "It's not like your father was a fountain of joy."

"Fountain of joy?" jeered Booth, "that's rich. Where did you read that little miss authorship?"

"I _am_ an author," retaliated Brennan, frustrated and angry, and she wasn't even sure at _what_. "I make a lot of money—"

"For those parts Angela writes," interjected Booth smugly. Brennan felt her fury step up a notch.

"I paid my dues! What do _you_ do? You can barely afford the rent on this…this…dump!"

"Dump? Dump? Oh, that's the best you can do? Maybe you should think that all my salary goes to child support for Parker!"

There was a breathless silence, and Brennan knew she wasn't cruel enough to voice the retort hanging on her lips. She swallowed it down, and glanced at the clock. Only 12:45 am. She could leave safely in a cab. She stood.

"Where are you going?" Booth growled.

"Out of this dump," she snarled back and slammed the door satisfyingly behind her. However, she couldn't bring herself to walk down the last stretch of hall, and instead, she curled up in the stairwell with the growing sense of shame that she was much too afraid to go back to her apartment. Damn Devon – he was ruining and controlling her life. _She _had to be in control. _She_ had to call the shots. Weary and broken, she curled her legs to her, buried her face in her jeans, and angrily refused to return of her own volition to Booth's apartment.


	11. Banish My Bane

**I feel like such a bamf; two updates in one day! I just couldn't stop until I resolved the (current) conflict. Please review, even if you reviewed the last one too, because it honestly makes my day that much better, especially if I've been having a bad one. **

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Booth answered his apartment phone on the first shrill ring and listened quietly, his anger and passion having left with its source. Without Bones, the hollow numbness he so desperately tried to sweat from his body - both in his subconscious nightmares and his conscious trips to work out- pounded in his ears. He was dressed for the gym. It was almost two now, but he hadn't even managed to look at his bed out of shame for driving her away. He had taken the elevator to the lobby and frantically asked the doorman if she had left. Chuckling at their couples problems, the doorman had responded in the negative. Booth knew she had to be somewhere in the building.

Satisfied she was safe, he then had the energy and grace to be livid. His plan was to run his anger out at the gym, and leave his door open for her to come crawling back. But the call from the downstairs lobby had set his heart pounding, and had his fury turning on the hand that fed it, and eating him up inside.

He slung the blanket instead of the gym bag over his shoulder and hesitantly opened the door, padded down the hall and pushed open the loud stairwell door. His heart plummeted when he realized the doormen hadn't been lying. She lay in a crumpled heap at the corner of the stairwell platform. Tiredly, he plodded quietly down the stairs and draped the blanket over her prone form. The fact that she didn't even stir gave testament to her sleepless nights, her stalking insomnia, and her very real terror she so blasély tried to hide. And had successfully hidden from him.

Working out had given him new strength and energy and scooping her up was next to no effort. She hardly murmured or moved, and with a kick to himself, he traipsed back up the stairs, recollecting their argument. He had meant the first comment about her head to be innocuous, unsuspicious, but she had immediately retaliated. Trying to keep his cool, he had smiled at her; it had felt so fake on his own face, so out of practice from his constant anger, that it wasn't really a wonder she had snapped at him. Trying to keep the peace, he tried to make a joke of the situation, something he did often around her – such as confessing his love for her, but adding the qualifier "atta girl love" to make light of a serious situation. Joking about the doctor had turned ugly, and the comment about Max had slipped out. Then it was as if their little interlude and trip to the hospital in the midst of their argument on the forensic platform had never occurred. He had simply found a way to vent some of his anger, and she had responded beautifully, rising to the challenge. Their usual bickering had birthed an ugly monster that fed on the tension that was now as highly strung between them as a heroin addict.

Grunting, Booth pulled open the door, and did the same with his own door. He felt her stirring gently against him and smiled; he couldn't help it. When she was tucked so tightly against his chest, she fused some of his brokenness back together. When they talked over the table at the diner and French fries, he felt her gently placing fragmented pieces of glass back in their missing counterparts. When he had kissed her…that hot, molten feeling that had coursed through his body had fused those realigned cracks together until he was whole again in places, shiny and new.

His entire world could be fixed if, for the rest of his life, he could hold her to him.

That's what hurt most of all.

He glanced down when she started making protesting noises as he carried her into the bedroom; the couch was good enough for him on those sweat driven nights. Panicking slightly, Booth had to wonder if the sheets were clean, but he didn't have time to complete the thought as she punched him hard in his abdomen. He didn't exactly drop her, so much as he let her fall the last few feet and recoiled.

"Ouch Bones, Jesus, what was that-" but when he saw her tightly shut eyes, he realized what was happening to her. What happened to him. Only she didn't have the luxury of medicine, or the convenient excuse of a soldier; this woman had seen three times as much death as he at the least, and no one had ever once considered that she had the same emotions and fears.

Soothingly, he pushed her arms away from him, stroking her hair, her arms and patting her shoulders and face lightly to rouse her.

"Bones, hey, wake up."

"Stop it." She spoke as clear as day, but her words weren't that of his Brennan. It was Tempe again, a scared and breathy shy teenage girl, a glimpse of whom he had seen in a hospital gown.

"Bones, you're having a nightmare, wake up," said Booth reasonably, using logic. He knew she responded well to her own language, and stroked her arms calmingly. She responded by arching, trying to kick him. He immediately let her go, and she began thrashing wildly, the tears real now.

"Stop it! Don't touch me!" She flung the pillows away from her, clawing for escape, and became ensnared in his sheets, her voice escalating an octave in pitch and in fear.

"No! Stop. Please, please let me go. I want to, I'll do it. You can do whatever you want – please don't touch me. Let go! Let me go!"

Terrified for her, and knowing how real those dreams could shackle, Booth climbed into the bed and quickly began untwining the sheets from around her limbs. Her breathing changed from pants of gasped air, to suddenly suppressed, shallow hitches.

"Please, get off of me," she panicked, and she stopped thrashing about under Booth. His heart ached at the unadulterated soft scream, at the begging, the broken pleading, the waiting for the inevitable. He had been tortured; he had never thought to ask if she had as well. Disgusted with himself, he realized they had much more in common than their opposite personalities would belie.

"Bones, wake up," his voice was on the edge of desperation, his eyes pricking uncomfortably when he realized _he _was causing this fear, this terror, this nightmare. That she was afraid.

Of him.

He sprung off of her and she began to wail a soulful, agonizing screech that seemed unceasing, without her needing to stop or draw breath. Understanding instinctively that no amount of talking or shaking would wake her now, he did the only thing he could think to do; he dumped the remainder of her nearby beer into her face, not even having the sense or the time to get water. He knew what a second felt like in those dreams; the trip to the kitchen and the rushing of the sink could have been hours in her world.

He watched her in relief as she sputtered awake, more than just beer dripping off her cheeks. Shivering, she clung to herself, holding herself together, wiping her face.

"Bones," he said, his relief so palpable she couldn't control her frantic sobs. The last he had heard of those were not after the gravedigger, but rather when she had been chained and threatened to be gutted by a rogue FBI agent. Her broken, slithering sobs had wended their way into his collarbone and then wormed farther into his heart. He had never forgotten. Her desperate clinging indicated neither had she.

"Booth," she wept brokenly, and he saw her fingers shook. "I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm so sorry." Her profuse apologizing could have been for anything, but Booth only held her as she whispered how sorry she was. He closed his eyes and pretended the sorry was for breaking his heart instead of his back.

When she had calmed enough, he held her face between his hands. He felt, more than saw, her tremble.

"Come on, climb in the shower, I'll grab you an old tshirt and sweats and change the sheets. Then I'll see if I can whip up something to eat in this godforsaken dump."

"It's not a dump," she whispered, "I was angry I know you-"

"It's a dump, Bones," laughed Booth, and she laughed breathlessly with him before he relinquished the fluttering pulse underneath his fingers back to its owner. She heaved a sigh and obediently went to shower the sticky beer out of her hair. Booth couldn't help but call out after her.

"Brennan." She turned in surprise at the absence of his favorite nickname. He was serious and wordlessly conveyed that through his dark brown gaze. "You aren't the only one who has nightmares. Not even nightmares like those."

As if he had lifted a huge burden from her shoulders, she straightened, nodded curtly and turned away, but not before Booth saw the glimpse of pure gratitude on her face. Suddenly cheerful although it was fast approaching half past two, he whistled as he stripped the sheets and mentally ran through a list of things to cook up for his partner.

Domesticity was sweet.


	12. Dance Around It All

**First off, I must apologize that it has been a very, very long time since my last update. Real life is a rascal and it's easy to forget how many days go by without an update. I apologize; I will try to do better.**

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Brennan was sitting at the kitchen table thinking about how easy it all was; effortless really. It had been simple to grab the eggs from the very back of Booth's refrigerator and make omelets. He had willingly slathered peanut butter (sans jelly since he was pitifully stocked in the grocery department) onto stale bread. She had wrangled together some sort of a haphazard late night meal and the remains of it lay between them. It had been easy.

What wasn't easy was how he watched her, or of when they brushed past each other in too tight places and her soft, newly soaped skin brushed against the sharp but clean smell of his male sweat. _It wasn't simply an observation_, she told herself, _it was fact. Males sweat more profusely but their sweat is less rancid due to the fact that females actually produce a fatty substance in the underside of their arms that is sweated out. But Booth-_ She cut off her train of thought and dropped her eyes to the crumbs of some last scrambled eggs. The tough crusts of her peanut butter sandwich were left grinning on the plate like she was six again.

She hadn't had a hair tie on her, so her wet dripping hair lay flat against her shoulders, lightly tousled and soaking through his oversized but very soft tee in twin spots over her collarbones. His sweatpants were so large she had been obliged to twist the tie viciously around her waist; it was a tad tight, but better than bare bottoms.

Domesticity. The easy part of their relationship.

The dangerous part. The part she found herself falling irrevocably back into, although they had been separated by their secrets for the past two months. He hadn't asked, and she hadn't offered, and now they both sat, her elbows crushed to the table, shielding her loose ends from his scrutiny, and he lay back in the chair, an arm draped nonchalantly across a window sill. Her coffee cup rattled a tad when she moved to mimic his pose. The two cups sat steaming, half full and curling around the tension humming over the table antithetical to their offhand postures. _Yes_, Brennan mused, _this was the easy part._

Then came the hardest part; when he opened his mouth. She could almost feel him sucking the air from between them before the question dangled between them, the suffering thick and suffocating.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She bored her gaze into the table instead, hurriedly putting hot coffee to her lips to tame the shiver she felt running up the length of her insides.

"This is a cute picture," she said instead, squinting at a tossed aside photograph that had been shielded from view by the napkin dispenser. She teased it out from underneath and let her blue gaze roam quietly over the photograph. Brennan was no expert at body language, but the sudden frozen rigidity of his posture locking in place clearly allayed her suspicions that he too, was keeping his nightmares from her.

"How old were you here?" she continued on blithely.

"Sixteen." His voice was tight, strained. She looked up in surprise.

"You don't like it?"

"Like what?" he growled. She frowned and watched him carefully rearrange his features to please her.

"Was this…like my pictures?" she asked carefully; daintily dancing around the subject of their fight on the forensic platform and the album that…she shut the thought off as effectively as a water spigot.

"Something like your pictures," he ground out. They were silent again; their secrets heavy.

"I'm really tired," she lied, just to say something, anything. He nodded.

"I changed the bed up for you."

"I…"

"I'll sleep on the couch…actually I was thinking of heading towards the gym."

"It's 3:15."

"It's a 24 hour gym."

"Booth that doesn't seem wise-"

"I go all the time it's no big deal."

"No big deal? You could-"

"Get hurt?" he sneered suddenly. She blushed, ashamed, and thinking of Devon.

"All the time?" she echoed dumbly instead, her voice soft. His eyes softened as she watched.

"I…don't sleep so good," he smiled crookedly.

"Do you take the pills?"

"_Now_."

"You're supposed to tell that to-"

"The board? The FBI? To Sweets?"

"I don't know," she whispered brokenly, pitifully. She felt helpless, lost. She wanted to reach out, but there was an unbridgeable gulf between them; between civilian and soldier, between having _been there_ and not.

"Bones," he agonized, wiping a hand over his face.

"Nightmares," she echoed simultaneously. They were both silent, their eyes locked in agony.

"About…_him_?" he guessed softly. She nodded once, tightly.

"And others," she confessed in a whisper. They were silent once more.

"About war?" His jaw tightened.

"War," he agreed. The tension lessened as if a noose had been loosened slightly.

"Work?" he asked quietly, hesitantly, and she knew what he was asking, what his eyes were asking as they roamed her face with a quiet hope, a quiet desperation that he was not alone.

"It filters in," she acquiesced. She could feel herself suddenly shaking, her skin rippling. "Booth I- I don't know what I'm doing here. I should go." She stood to leave, realizing the futility even before he too, stood. His oversized clothes swirled around her limbs, revealing her figure more than she merited. She crossed her arms anxiously over her chest.

"What?" he rumbled, and she could feel herself shake beneath his magnifying gaze. He could see her; all of her. "Bones that doesn't make any sense." She laughed breathlessly and protested, all the while knowing full well that she had stood and tried to leave because she had hit her resistance. Her wall of terror; of not talking about it. About any of it. Knowing full well that he knew that as well.

He instead tugged gently at one of her arms and led her to the couch before she sank down next to him. His skin was hot against hers, burning. She shivered and felt her muscles liquefy without her command; felt herself slumping against him without her permission.

"You're freezing Brennan!" he exclaimed and she laughed into his shoulder.

"I…" she trailed off. The clock was screaming the time at them both. She swallowed back her growing sense of fear at sleep. _I'm scared_ she whispered in her mind. Somehow he heard her.

"Me too." He was very quiet before he offered it. "You want to just crash here?" She nodded.

"Just because I'm cold," she qualified. He nodded and chuckled, a sound she could feel beneath her cheek.

He draped his arm over her shoulder and she snuggled into his chest. He knew how to make her comfortable and flipped on the television to make a noise – any noise, to fill the silence between them; a silence of a much greater distance than their physical bodies pressed together were.

"I've seen this one," she smiled sleepily. He glanced down in surprise.

"You've seen Ocean's Eleven? They only show this nowadays on late night television."

"Yes well…" she trailed off, flushed. He nodded in understanding. But he didn't show pity and Brennan sighed her relief.

"Oh. Well good thing we can just both doze off to it then." She smiled, happy with talking and not talking about it. She relaxed and concentrated on his steady heartbeat, his slowly unwinding muscles beneath her face, his expanding rib cage, the heavier and heavier weight of his limp arm against her back and his head occasionally brushing her hair as he struggled to doze off in a more partner appropriate situation.

Finally and completely relaxed, Brennan finally allowed her brow to un-crease, her eyes to drift shut naturally. And then she ruined it; she should have known not to let her guard down, not to relax.

Because now all she could do was cry.


	13. All Worked Up And Nowhere to Go

**I just want to point out that there are so many kinds of angst...so many kinds of agonizing slowness. **

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He was startled at the sobs; he was so tired his hard, sculpted muscles he could feel laying thickly on his frame twitched involuntarily beneath her face as the first, agonizing, horrifying, blatant sob ripped out of her. It ripped out of her like it had chopped its way out with scissors, leaving his beautiful partner curled in little shavings of her former self. He could almost see it as his arms buckled around her automatically clutching her more tightly than he strictly should – both because of impropriety and because he was afraid of crushing her. But he couldn't loosen up and he watched the pieces of herself flaking away out of her shuddering frame; first to go was her dignity and self control, but as the sobs continued he became afraid that she would fall so apart, even he wouldn't be able to stitch her back together.

He held her tighter and tighter until he realized the reason her sobs were quieting was because she was gasping for air; he loosened his hold and she gave a shriek that was almost a scream and began shaking so hard, he couldn't stop his fingers from curling tightly into her flesh, so tightly, he could feel his fingers leaving indentations into her soft skin.

He didn't know what was causing it, but he knew what she was saying, what she was saying without the words, the morphemes, the semantics and syntax and all the anthropology of linguistics.

She was screaming simply: _Pain_. _Fear. Loss._

Booth figured he might as well lay down and get comfortable, this wasn't agony that came out quickly. He managed to squeeze her between the back of the couch and his body so that she had pressure keeping her shaking, guttural sobs inside of her on all sides. It seemed to help, for she quieted slowly and refused to look up. He didn't realize what he had done until he ran his fingers over her hair instead of his face; the top of her hair, having recently dried from the shower, was now wet with tears. His tears.

Hearing his partner breaking, and feeling her breaking right underneath him, and feeling the pain piercing new bullets through himself, Booth cried too. He was scared, and alone, and terrified. He had withdrawn and this was partially his fault. But most of all he regretted that he had been selfish enough. He had thought by distancing himself from her, he'd be sparing her pain, he'd be sparing her his suffering. He wished now he hadn't, both for her sake but also for his. She had been missing her best friend.

So had he.

He realized suddenly his fingers were aching. He slowly unbent them, feeling her flesh retain its surface tension as he flattened his hands against her back. Unbeknownst to him, he had somehow managed to bury his fingers as deeply inside of her as he could, somehow to just hold her together – with his bare hands if necessary.

She was quiet, and so was he. He began rubbing her back, up and down her arms and stroking her hair with one hand and his own cheek. While his cheek relished in the slippery coolness of her semi-dry hair and his right hand meandered over the curves he had only dreamed about, he began murmuring without realizing the words, desperate only to comfort.

"Hush little Bones, now don't you cry

Booth's gonna buy you some apple pie.

And if that pie is a nasty thing…

I'll just buy you a diamond –"

He cut off abruptly when he realized that he had fallen into the default pattern of Parker's favorite lullaby and flushed, hoping she didn't know the rest of that line. He also realized she was quiet, just breathing, listening to him.

"Hi," he rumbled instead, feeling awkward. She smiled against his chest weakly.

"Sorry," she whispered back. "I got your shirt all-"

"Snotty?" he supplied and instead of giggling as she normally would, she shrugged and nodded. "You ever going to come out?" She shook her head violently against his chest.

"I like it here," she confessed quietly, "plus, I look horrible."

"You don't," placated Booth, but didn't press. They lay together, Booth's arm still roving over her body, rubbing her back. His fingers found a knot and he pushed gently. He knew something of kinesics because he felt her left leg jerk slightly as she tried not to moan; he could tell it hurt her. Gently he soothed and worried at the spot with his fingers without speaking. The only sound in the apartment, in truth it seemed the whole world, was their breathing, both hard as if having run miles but quieting slowly in synchronization.

He felt some glow of satisfaction at the almost too quick reaction; one minute the knot was bunched muscles and nerves beneath his finger, the next it had like a rubber band stretched flat with almost a twang as her skin shivered. She sighed and even in that sigh, his sharp sniper ears caught satisfaction and a little groan. He felt his muscles relax in response…in most areas.

Instead his fingers simply moved on as if he hadn't noticed and he began rubbing her back again, his cheek still tucking her head firmly against his heartbeat, which quickened as he realized she could hear it, but with a stiff fingered hand gently massaged her back until he found another knot. He kneaded for several seconds and with satisfaction felt that one melt away too. He frowned, although tried not to let her feel it; though every person had tension knotting their muscles, Brennan's back was like a barbed wire fence. Booth was immediately inundated with guilt. He knew why. His mind flashed to the last time anyone had just rubbed her back and he knew she was thinking the same thing as he found a particularly large knot that made her hiss aloud.

This one was more tricky and lay in the hollow of her spine. His fingers kneaded for a minute or more until frustrated, she squirmed beneath him, yanking her head from under his chin to his unhappiness, for he thought she was getting up, but he grinned as she only wedged herself stomach down instead of laying on her side.

She peeked up at him through her hair; he could tell she had been crying heavily with such bloodshot eyes; out of courtesy he declined to comment and instead grinned cheekily down at her. Well, what he hoped was cheekily, and not the rampant lust he was truly feeling.

Her squirming had moved her farther down the couch, her head by his ribcage. To compensate, he scrunched next to her but kept his face a head length's away; he knew she would never allow him to touch her face to face. The intricate knot was still there, and he knew that it was one of the nodes of her stress. He knew how she hunched at her computer and wrote, and how perfectly stiff she bent at the waist to examine the bodies at the lab. Testing, he pushed his fingers into her back right over her bunched muscles. She tensed in agony, arching slightly as if to escape and he quickly, without words, apologized by rubbing her back. Frustrated with the slipperiness of his own shirt, Booth hesitated. He moved his fingers lower and lower and then gently moved them back up – _under_ the fabric, until it was just skin against skin.

At first she flinched but relaxed and actually moaned in pleasure when he managed to unwind another pressure point much more quickly next to her shoulder blade without the friction of the shirt between them. Working quietly over her back and getting more sleepily murmured feedback through tiny vocalizations of sound, Booth had to swallow the dryness coating his throat. She wasn't wearing a bra; he could tell because his hands had been all over her.

Gingerly, he tugged the shirt up and she complied, until it was bunched up around her armpits and her smooth, perfectly ivory back was bared to him. Worrying away at the stresser at the base of her spine, he knew immediately both by her heavy groan of approval and the immediate flood of unwinding muscle he could literally feel beneath his fingertips, when he resolved it. He had to concentrate strictly on _her_ before he busted something, and therefore froze when her hand slipped under _his_ shirt to clutch at his abdomen, his hard muscles rippling under her palm.

It was only when he looked at her face that he wanted to laugh instead of whimper. Brennan was sound asleep, and clutching at him so he wouldn't, and couldn't, leave. He turned onto his back as he settled next to her and tried not to look at a new mountain peak as he breathed beneath her hand, knowing her bare body was next to him. He realized too, as she flexed against him in sleep, that she probably wasn't even wearing underwear.

He groaned, knowing he wouldn't sleep this night.

And for the first time in months, he was joyful for the insomnia.


	14. So Bloody Stupid

**Fun fact: sometimes real life provides perfect ammunition for fanfic. Why yes, I am missing a little trench of skin. Yes I was as cool about it as Brennan - until of course I screamed, thinking there was a 2 inch leech on me sucking my blood. Other fun fact: How a leech would get into my shower is not relevant to fear factor. **

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Brennan awoke the next morning wedged stiffly between Booth's armpit and the spine of the swaybacked couch digging into her first and second ribs. She arched quietly, determined not to disturb him as he was sleeping soundly and didn't seem to be having any nightmares. It was Saturday. She knew it both from the quiet expectation that the air seemed to hold, and the clock radio perched precariously on a stack of golf magazines; Brennan frowned over Booth's stomach. Booth didn't care much for golf. She smiled to herself a little in embarrassment when she saw his shorts; it was, after all, morning. For a crazy, obscene moment, she wanted to stretch herself upwards and kiss him awake, just to see how it felt to wake up next to someone who she lov- who she trusted. For Brennan, that was almost more important. She trusted him with her life.

Trying to wriggle from her locked position, she blushed harder feeling her bare stomach scrape along the rough fabric of the couch; she had forgotten the _very_ late night massage. She must have fallen asleep. She also tried not to recall the minutes before that. She had never wanted anyone to ever see her that broken. She gulped and gingerly touched her face with her fingertips. It was puffy and swollen. She needed steam to bring it down and cleanse her pores. She needed to be herself again, to regain her composure, her Dr. Brennan persona mask, and most of all, her control.

"Booth," she muttered and griped as she squirmed. His superpowers were working full force and _would not_ wake no matter how much she nudged him. The couch was narrow enough for one person but now Brennan was literally laying wedged in a tiny sliver of a crack between the couch cushions and the back of the furniture. Crawling out of it was like being born.

She finally popped up like a daisy by overestimating how much force it would take to lever herself from the tiny space. Flailing her arms wildly, her shirt flipped over her face, she planted her hands on the first solid object to help her from tipping over the arm of the couch and onto the hardwood floor. Her right hand found the edge of the back of the couch the other found –

"Bones!" yelped Booth, startling awake at a _very_ surprising force to his manhood. Bones heard him more than saw him jerk upright only for him to screech again. "Bones!" Restabilizing herself, she immediately yanked her shirt down over herself, only to realize she was completely bare chested, and ergo bare breasted. Mortified, she clapped her hands over her now very cold breasts.

"Booth!" she shrieked back and he, always the gentleman, albeit a bumbling one, clapped his hands over his eyes.

"Oh my God Brennan," he moaned. "You were full frontal and every-"

"Was not," she snapped.

"And you touched-"

"Can we please drop it!" she hissed and he quickly rolled off the couch, failed to catch his balance, and landed with a hard roll to the floor.

"Ow," he muttered grumpily and Brennan had to keep herself from laughing. When she glanced to the clock she saw it was seven am. As if echoing her revelation Booth groaned. "It is _much_ too early to be up on a Saturday."

"Go back to sleep," she griped right back, "I just wanted to take a shower."

"No shower," smirked Booth smugly. Brennan flashed back to the day she had interrupted him bathing with a Green Lantern comic and a hat that dispensed beer. Not to mention the rubber duck, or even the previous night when she had made the same shocking discovery at Booth's lack of a shower after having beer drenching her hair. She refused to think that Booth would find her anal showering so close together, but she didn't want to tell him the truth. She knew she looked horrible; she didn't need him teasing her on such a sensitive subject.

"Fine," she snapped, "I'll take a bath."

"Why?" he called after her. She seethed and waved some inane gesticulation before settling on a Danish hand signal that was very rude. He didn't seem offended and started laughing as she slammed the door shut behind her.

Brennan, horrified, slammed her own back against the door. Taking several calming breaths at the unusual situation – much different than most of her nights spent with Booth as partners – she yanked on the tap handles. Rummaging through the cabinet concealed behind the mirror, her hand stilled on a long object and she awkwardly rubbed her legs together. It was definitely time to shave. She figured Booth wouldn't mind, so she plunked it next to the tub. Irked, she remembered that she had had to use his shampoo and soap last night. No matter: she would simply have a soak, wash her face and shave her legs. Just to give her some time to avoid the awkward situation she had inadvertently created, and also to let her face deflate its puffiness in the steam.

Stripping off Booth's sweatpants – the tight rope leaving a little weal around her smooth, taut waist – and shrugging out of his shirt, she cast around for something to pin her hair up with. Finding nothing (again) she washed her face in frustration, griping to herself about getting water in her hair.

Seeing the tub finally sufficiently full, Brennan stepped in and sighed at the feeling; although Booth's apartment was very bare on the amenities and hardly came within range of the luxuries of her own, she didn't have a bathtub. Her standing shower had an expensive head to be sure, but nothing beat a good soak.

As she sighed and unwound her newly sore muscles in the tub both from sleeping immobile all night and from Booth's ministrations, Brennan arched her back and finally decided she had let the water cool long enough. Humming slightly and returning to her peace of mind far before she had finally come undone at the seams, Brennan propped her leg up on the side of the tub, completely naked, and began shaving her left leg, stopping the drain up so she could use the remaining water to wash out Booth's razor head.

Ruminating about the night before, Brennan recalled in shame and anger her breakdown. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_. She chanted to herself, angrily yanking the razor over the calf in sweeping strokes. Stupid was a new normative to Temperance Brennan. She twisted her mouth in frustrated ire as she realized she had probably never done something so thoughtless, so careless, so…so…_stupid_ in all her life.

With a gasp she looked down as she thought her last "stupid." Coming out the top of her razor was a fingernail's width shred of two inch skin. Disgusted, Brennan watched in both rebuke at her own stupidity, and fascination as the blood spurted out of the front of her shin. It hurt slightly, but she was more worried as she watched the copious amounts of blood wash away the shaving cream – which incidentally smelled like she was rubbing Booth all over her legs – on the unshaved portion of her leg. Furiously, she hastily shaved the rest. She muttered a curse as she splashed the blood and excess cream off and hissed as the warm water washed clean the injury for a moment so she could see it was at least as wide as a nickel and as long as the top half of her thumb. It was deep too; so deep the skin beneath was freshly pink with big pores. She knew she had skinned herself to a very low surface layer of her dermis. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

She glanced in frustration at her other, unshaved leg standing on the tile. With a sigh, she simply switched legs, ignoring the bleeding, and lathered up her right leg before taking her time shaving that one. By the time she was finished, she realized she was getting Booth's floor very bloody. Snatching a towel up she wrapped it around herself and wandered the small bathroom looking for bandages and Neosporin before realizing there was no way she could stem the bleeding by binding the platelets with pressure, slather the Neosporin, open a band aid and apply it simultaneously. Enraged once more at her thoughtlessness, she realized she needed Booth. Holding her leg with one hand and hopping to avoid getting even more scarlet footsteps tracing and retracing themselves on the floor, and holding the towel with the other, Brennan shuffled to the door before twisting the lock.

"Booth?" she called out, the vexation obviously leeching into her voice for his panicked voice immediately responded.

"Bones? Everything okay?"

"Your razor is sharp," she said grouchily, "a lot sharper than mine."

"Do you need a band aid? Lemme grab the first aid kit."

"Fine," she mumbled loud enough for him to here. "I'll be in the tub."

Hopping back to and into the tub, Brennan let go of her leg for the time it took to put her sanguine hand on the porcelain rim, leaving several bloody handprints as she almost slipped in clumsiness. _This is ridiculous_, she simmered. She felt around waspishly for the drain and yanked it out, letting the now brownish, gory water, drain around her ankles. The dark patina of blood left a coating in the tub, an almost pretty pattern with her bloody footprints in the bathroom, handprints rimming the bathtub and the incessant rivulets of blood winding their way rapidly over both sides of her left ankle and draining in little red rivers to the drain.

When Booth walked in his face blanched and went completely white.

"Brennan," he whispered, and Brennan was shocked to notice he looked faint, grabbing the doorway and glancing wildly at the mirror imaging her reflection over the sink. "So much blood," he gasped, before he staggered inside, his hands overlapping the bloody handprints of the tub before he fell to his knees, face ashen, and eyes more bare than Brennan's wet, shivering and nude body.


	15. Don't You Recognize Despair?

**Hello strangers; been a while. I just want everyone to be aware that comments of this story are deeply personal to others who have experienced similar things (which is, incidentally, why it's called angst haha) and so any readers who find this uninteresting because "nothing happens" I apologize ;) But some of these things about B&B needed to be said. Please review though! **

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"Booth? Booth!" Brennan's voice was panicked, scared. She couldn't understand why he was slumping to the floor. She stumbled out of the bathtub towards him, the blood spilling everywhere, reminding him of himself, struggling weakly against Pops as he slung young Seeley into his arms and raced for the hospital. The blood was parching her skin of its color and leeching onto him, seeping scarlet into the white of his shirt. Terrified, she shook him and her relieved face swam into solidity as he groggily concentrated on the twin blue eyes boring into his own brown ones. He realized belatedly his hand was moving inexorably towards her face and he was mumbling over and over "Don't…_don't_". He stopped his breathless chant as he came more to himself.

"Booth!" Her voice was so scared, so full of confusion; she didn't understand. Booth hastened to reassure her, but words seemed a step too far for his cold body; he knew this feeling. It was shock. He had felt it often after being shot. It was an unpleasant feeling, making him feel like a child.

"Are you okay?" The words seemed so paltry, so empty, so meaningless. They fell on his ears, as helpful as a bucket of blood on his face. Booth nodded numbly. He could hardly perform that action and realized if he went into real psychological shock, she would simply drag him to Sweets. The idea of confessing his sanguine past to the young psychologist was almost enough to send him into an entirely different kind of shock. He forced his fingers to move, to wiggle and clench them into fists. He concentrated on tensing each group of his muscles while he listened carefully to her words, compelling himself to understand the meaning behind them as he clung to them like a lifeline.

"I cut myself shaving Booth." She held his limp hand against her leg until he could feel the blood coming out of the cut. "It's nothing, just a scratch. It bled a lot, but I'm _fine_, I just need a bandaid." Booth nodded numbly then brightened imperceptibly. He forced himself to speak.

"You cut yourself shaving," he echoed hollowly, his voice dead. He winced; he didn't want it to sound so shallow, but he could hardly breathe, much less think. He willed himself to do better when he heard Brennan swallow hard; he couldn't cause her any more pain.

"Yes. _Yes_. Booth, _Booth_." He realized that he was rubbing his wrists over the twin tattoos of soul and destiny. "Booth are you okay?" he nodded numbly and gave an empty smile. She swallowed and he realized that look he couldn't place on her face was one he had seen hundreds of times before: _heartache_. He shook his head as if to clear his ears of water. He forced himself to get words through his constricted throat, hoping they didn't come out sounding mangled.

"Yeah. I'm fine. I just thought that you were in pain. I thought…" he carefully ran his fingers through his hair, pressing his knuckles to his skull as if the pressure would keep his head from floating away. It wasn't the blood that was upsetting – or even the circumstance but rather because it was Brennan. His partner. The love of his life and he was staring directly, numbly at her without words. He forced himself to continue his thought…for her. He wondered idly if his own face echoed that out of place heartache on her face. "Bones…there was just so much blood. There's…so much blood," he faltered.

"It's nothing." Quickly, she thrust her leg under the stream of running water to rinse it of it slowly pulsating blood. "Booth look – I'm fine." He nodded, appeased at last and began to sit up slowly. He breathed slowly through his nose, trying not to see the handprints all over the rim of the tub.

"Ugh, Bones, you got it all over me," he joked, staring in fascination at the blood both saturating his shirt but also coating one of his hands. His face must have been too white to pass for normalcy for Brennan quickly sprang for the first aid kit.

"Here Booth, it's fine I can do it – I was being silly." She reached for the bandages and the towel separating her naked body from him fell away. He couldn't look away but knew he should. With great effort he snapped his gaping eyes onto the gash in her shin.

"Brennan, let me see your leg."

"Booth I…I…" she blushed. Booth suddenly felt inept; Brennan rarely blushed so fully. He studiously handed her the towel and she covered herself again – not quite snatching it from his hands.

"Booth –" she halted, not seeming to know what to say. Booth was surprised. It was probably the first time in their relationship (as partners) that she had not known what to say to him – a novel feeling. She was an award winning author for God's sake. He touched her leg under the running water in the tub.

"It's just a cut," she repeated.

"Let me see." She pulled her leg out of the running water and he hissed under his breath. "Bones…What did you do? Did you use my razor?" A bit of his teasing tone came back and she blushed and admitted that she had.

"I was shaving and I guess I pressed too hard." He looked seriously at her.

"I know what pressing too hard is. This isn't pressing too hard, this is you lost control." She blanched.

"Booth." Her voice was angry, hard now. "What did you say?"

He glowered right back, "I know about…"he faltered and their secrets stood between them.

"You know about cuts?" sneered Brennan, and Booth felt their bickering pick up, both of their frustrations and angers raising ugly heads and lashing out. He had left her alone – he had _left_ her – the one thing he had promised he would never do and he had done it. Not physically of course but now she was withdrawing back behind the door he had so carefully pried open. She stopped suddenly, humbled and looking disturbed. "Booth…you know…about cuts?" He looked away from her eyes as he slowly gathered up the Neosporin and gauze.

"That was a long time ago," his voice was almost inaudible.

"Booth." Hers was just as quiet.

"It was a long time ago," he repeated.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. He told her it was okay; there was nothing else to say. He opened his mouth to tell her about Jared and Pops and his pictures. To tell her about his tattoos. To confess his choking loneliness, to confess his nightmares more fully but instead they were silent as he bandaged her leg, carefully wrapping the athletic tape around her calf. And she, without any mortification, clutched the bloody towel in front of her, not even wrapping it around the back of her for fear of slipping in the bloody bathtub.

Brennan knew she had said the wrong thing. But she didn't know _what_ to say and had to think. As she quietly and methodically watched Booth's big hands wrapping her leg in gauze, she remembered all those days – the days in which she had to talk to get herself up in the morning. The days where she lay an hour at a time, the days when her parents had just left and Russ hadn't yet. Those mornings usually consisted of dread and the mixed sounds of showering and mumbling - Russ talking to himself the way he always did.

She would wake up an hour early just so she had time to literally talk herself out of bed, to face another day. That was the kind of bravery she had to dredge out of her soul. The adrenaline that forced her to be brave when there was a gun pointed at her was a weak thing in comparison. Her body helped her by surging her full of potent energy. Yet the bravery of waking up, of taking one more breath, of not falling down into the pit of despair that sat next to her bed, of sitting up slowly, of moving sluggishly to the other side of the room and of methodically putting on clothes – that was among the hardest tasks she had ever had to accomplish, including all exploits in Anthropology and any incidents of terrorism. She remembered, swallowing, the agony of sitting silently her entire day in a world of her own, as the memories swirled through her. It was the kind of bravery where the only word she would speak all day would be: _Polo_.

She ached for him.

"Booth." He looked at her. He could sense the change of tone in the tenor of her voice. He always knew when their conversations changed; that's why they got along so well. Her brain moved so quickly and his heart kept pace.

"I know…" she faltered and couldn't finish. His eyes came up to hers.

"You know what?"

"I know what it looks like." His brow creased, he looked as if he only partially understood what she was saying.

"What Bones?" His voice was quiet and she looked right at him.

"I know what it feels like." She couldn't bring herself to say anything else and his voice grew more urgent, pleading, desperate to know that during those times he was not alone. Little did he know that though they were five years apart, Brennan knew all too well that those years were startlingly similar.

She looked into his eyes and saw what she had felt long ago; she had thought she was alone in those tumultuous times. Now she realized so had he.

"What are you talking about?" His voice was harsh, demanding. Her eyes filled of their own accord.

"Despair," she said quietly, right as he finished wrapping the bandage.


	16. Too Cruel to Be Kind

**hello - yes, I went back and changed the chapter title. "Shocking Confessions" was admittedly a bit banal and blah - probably as a result of running very very late and wanting to get the post up before the next day; I went back and edited out the typos. Nothing major changed. As always - I feed greedily on the reviews (sorry to those who were disappointed in my title - I was unaware you cared so much! Thanks!)**

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The silence reigned absolute and Brennan felt her face flush; how ridiculous to assume that he would know of what she spoke. His eyes were far away – and she wondered if he was ruminating on her trip to the hospital a few scant hours before.

"The worst," she whispered into the echoing silence, and his eyes returned to her face, but not before lingering over her long, supple limbs, revealed behind a blood soaked towel. "The worst homes were at the beginning, right after both my parents and Russ left. When I was still…well I wasn't myself I…"

"Was still in shock Bones…the emptiness, the uncaring, the listlessness…that's shock. There's a word for it." Brennan blinked.

"I see. Yes…I suppose that adequately describes my erratic behavior. It was…" her voice grew thick and faraway and she frowned unconsciously. Looking back on those times was like seeing a picture underwater. Her memories weren't blurred so much as moving through a thick, viscid liquid, and it was hard to breathe, as if the weight was crushing her lungs. Sounds and voices were distorted as if travelling beneath the waves of the ocean, with a high pitched incessant white noise. Brennan wondered if shock truly explored the nuances of such a…hazy recollection.

"It was silly of me – ludicrous really – to hope that it was a nightmare…a dream…but that's what it felt like Booth, a horrible nightmare. Nothing seemed to be real; emotions were muted, sounds hollow…I'm not making sense…"

"No. You are." His voice was choked with understanding she could hear more than see in his face.

"I can't truly recall the first families names without the shoe I wrote them on. It was the other foster kids that finally woke me to my reality; their stories were at first unbelievable – being treated as sex slaves, having to work to earn their room – unimaginable things." She felt Booth's fists tighten on her bandage that they were both unconsciously still holding.

"At first of course, I discounted them. My first families were kind, warm, loving people. A simple people – but I'm sure they were understanding nonetheless. Perhaps it was something I said or did, but I rarely spoke, and I believe that unnerved them. My first three homes went by in a matter of eight weeks." Out of the corner of her eye, Brennan realized, Booth had blinked in astonishment. She answered his unspoken question.

"My average stay in a foster home was around two and a half months. Since I lived in the same area and with the same peers, I believe the system tried to implement some form of stability in my life, as I continued to go to the same high school for all those years."

"Yes…I remember." There was a thread of amusement lacing his voice and she recalled that she had brought him to her reunion.

"I now realize that the school, where admittedly I was loathed and freakish, was probably the only thing that saved my life."

"Kids can be cruel," Booth said quietly. "I know…I was one of them."

"Actually," corrected Brennan, "it astounds me now to realize that many of my peers also had faulty home lives…none so persistent as mine I assume, but it amazes me that everyone as an adolescent believes that they are struggling alone."

"In a lot of ways," Booth said darkly, struggling to his feet, "they are."

They were silent, staring at each other; breath caught.

"The Greersons were the worst," she finally confessed, and was surprised when he gently took the corners of the towel hanging by her hips – as she was simply clutching a fistful to shield the front of her – and gingerly wrapped the towel around her body, covering her modestly without a single glance down. Brennan's eyes pricked, but she ignored them in favor to relish in her mind the pure, transcendent companionship of the gesture. Her mind supplied the correct terminology: love. She brushed the thought aside, flustered.

"Rape." It wasn't a question. Booth said it in a disinterested, faraway tone as he slowly began to wipe the blood up with some miraculously unearthed Clorox wipes.

"Not the father…Devon…" she shuddered. "He was a…troubled boy, you might say."

"Really, you might say that?" Booth suddenly shouted, and his face burned with rage. "Just _maybe_. He's just 'TROUBLED?' Are you serious Brennan? How can you be so detatched…unfeeling – after what he did to you? After what he did to-"

"To who?" she fired back, and the silence reigned and she laughed bitterly, their mecurial moods flipping her confession around to vent their bile. "To you?"

"YES!" thundered Booth. "What he did to me. Driving me insane with worry. Both before and now!"

"It didn't bother you before!" sneered Brennan. "You didn't even _notice_!"

"Notice what? That you aren't sleeping?"

"Speak for yourself!"

"That's because I have such bad nightmares I'm too scared to even breathe!" screamed Booth, and realized he wasn't drowning her reply out with his bellow; in fact, his confession echoed in the blood soaked silence.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered.

"Well I did now," grunted Booth, kneeling to wipe more of her now rusting blood.

"Don't you trust me?"

"Of course but what does that have-"

"We're partners. We confide."

"About most things Bones not every-"

"Yes. Everything. Were you ashamed?" Her bald faced, blatant statement caught him off guard, his mouth open with a retort. The fire left as quickly as it came.

"Yeah, I was…ashamed." His words were guilty, hushed. They both said nothing for a long time.

"I'll get dressed," Brennan shrugged. "Then I'll come help."

"No." His voice was strained. "This is a mess I have to clean up for myself." Brennan didn't quite understand, but his face decided her.

"Okay," she said quietly. She turned to go, but fingers on the knob turned back. "Oh and Booth?"

His ashen, but resolute face turned to hers in question.

"I was ashamed too."

The door clicked quietly shut before she could see the single tear treading boldly over a clenched jaw.

He had seen the bruises.


	17. And I Scream As It Sucks Me Back In

The car ride to the Jeffersonian was silent that morning. The weekend with Brennan had been rocky and traumatic; he had insisted at staying at her apartment when she demanded a change of clothes and a real shower so as not to repeat her razor blade mishap. They both looked haggard, and Booth was in a foul mood having not hit the gym from Brennan's apartment. He also hadn't slept a wink, keeping close watch on the windows, his senses as a sniper blaring. He also remembered vividly being blown up in the same apartment and was overly prepared for any nasty surprises Brennan's stalker might have laid.

However, as persistent and patient as Devon may be, he wasn't terribly bright. Booth had needlessly patrolled; the apartment had remained silent, and Brennan slept peacefully through the door. When she came out to shower the next morning though, Booth realized she had been laying awake all night as he had, silent, stiff and alone, too strained to even get up and pace as he had. Her eyes had the startled, haunted look that many of his soldiers had caught when laying in foxholes at night, every sound like a cannon fire among crickets. He realized then, they had both been alone and petrified, only a room apart, both too proud to seek the other out. Booth found the hindsight distasteful and was furious with himself.

Both were groggy, snappish and ashamed. Booth tried to push that idea from his head, but once niggled through his conscious, it would not retreat. Shame. That was the awkward, thick tension that hung between them like a line of laundry. Each pin held up dripping memories, heavy with despair and loneliness.

Booth clenched his jaw as he dragged the heavy steering column to and fro, darting through traffic before pulling to an ungraceful halt next to her car in the parking lot.

"Thanks." The word was short and clipped. He ungraciously followed her out of the car, slamming his door slightly harder than he needed to follow her into the structure.

"Booth." The call came from behind him and he stopped to turn, seeing Cam rushing as quickly as she could towards him in heels, seeming fearful he would turn and walk away given their cold parting Friday afternoon. He became torn upon seeing Cam's face staring at Brennan's retreating back, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle; a pose, Booth had noticed, she had been assuming more and more often. Booth found it rude she hadn't waited for the two of them, as they all three were going to the same place.

"How's she doing?" Cam asked in a low voice as she and Booth began walking slowly up the flights of endless concrete stairs to get out of the structure.

"What?" Booth was shocked; Cam was pretty good at being a cop, but for her to know or notice this much…

"Her stalker," and Booth's mind was immediately eased.

"Oh. Right. I stayed with her all weekend."

"That's good," sighed Cam in relief, but when he didn't say anything her gorgeous dark eyes began rummaging over his features as if she were digging in the Lost and Found. "That's not good…" her eyebrows came together sharply. "You look like you didn't sleep a bit." To his relief, she refrained from any wisecracking, keeping the conversation serious for once, since they both had a penchant for writing off their feelings through jokes.

"Hardly," grunted Booth.

"Again?" asked Cam, pursing her lips slightly. He ground his back teeth together. Cam's new "mom" kick was putting him out. She used to be able to drink him and Jared under the table and still pick their pockets bare of lint at poker. When he sourly told her so she laughed but then paused.

"That's actually not a bad idea." Inwardly Booth knew she was thinking twice as fast as his exhausted, strung out mind was capable of. She had another plan up her sleeve. "Good thinking Booth. Our people have been out of sorts lately."

"_Our_ people?" he said shortly in surprise, his face twisted with confusion and rebellion.

"Yes _our_ people," Cam said impatiently. "Ever since you and Brennan have been off…"

"Wait what? Who told you that? Me and Bones are fine."

"No one had to tell me," she smirked back, knowing her calm voice would be both more effective and a hell of a lot more irritating than the tone he was taking with her. "You two have hardly spoken. Everyone has noticed. Not just me, or Sweets or Angela and Hodgins – the interns, the lab techs, even the security have been whispering. Whatever your beef is with Dr. Brennan-"

"I don't have-" Booth began, but Cam blithely and cheerfully steamrolled over his protest.

"A poker night is a great idea. We'll have it Friday – we'll tell everyone today. I'll have Michelle spend the night somewhere and it'll be at my house. Hmm? That way everyone will have something to look forward to at the end of the week."

"I don't know if that's such a good idea…" moaned Booth. He was unsure of how well alcohol would mix with his mood.

"It's a great idea," said Angela firmly behind them. They were all three inside the Jeffersonian now, walking towards the big double doors of the Forensic platform. "Cam's right Booth – game night is the perfect way to unwind around here. You and Bren are as tightly sprung as clock springs, and frankly I don't blame her. That freak is creeping _me_ out – knowing he's watching her here too."

"Don't say that," ground out Booth furiously. "I'm _working_ on it."

"Easy there big guy," soothed Cam. "You can't be everywhere- or everything. You don't look so good yourself. Have you thought about talking to Sweets?" Booth heard the undercurrent to her words. _Or talking to me_; she was his oldest friend, after all. Booth wasn't sure she could ever understand. The gulf between them...between civilian and soldier, between a real family and a sham between...Who was he kidding? The gulf between sympathy and _empathy_. Of "I'm Sorry," and the silence that means "I understand."

"Sweets," scoffed Booth derisively. "Yeah, thanks, now I'll go play in traffic because those are both such great ideas."

Cam peeled away from their group with a scowl and a shrug.

"Well while I like Sweets, I can see why he'd be off-putting," said Angela with a teasing smile. "God knows I only tell him superficial relationship stuff – kind of like a gay friend."

"The kid's not gay, Angela," snorted Booth, wondering how he got himself into these things.

"Well what about Gordon Gordon? You always got along okay with him."

"He's a chef now."

"With a lifetime of knowledge."

"Yeah. Yeah – it's a good idea. I'll stop over there for lunch." Angela waved with a dazzling smile, happy to help, and peeled off his other side in search for her best friend.

Booth took a deep breath and felt the sudden urge to visit the men's room. Once inside he leaned on the door behind him, not needing to go, simply needing a moment…space.

It took him there, a vicious brutal smash to his skull, his headache escalating to migraine as he was caught in a fever dream he hadn't seen in fifteen years. The urinals were off, somehow, now made of rock instead of porcelain, and sand was blowing in his mouth. Surely that hot of a wind couldn't be coming from the hand dryers? He forgot where he was, forgot how to stand, and forgot his own name until a PFC pulled him up by the hand, screaming at his sergeant to get away. Booth stared numbly at the hand clasped in his own; its screaming soldier was gone and the arm was severed mid elbow. Reviled, he tossed it away, realizing real life was very much like a nightmare. The sand sucked hungrily at his boots as he ran, pulling him down the way the beach did without the feel of sand between his toes or the wet relief of cold ocean spray. He stupidly turned, glancing over his shoulder, knowing what he would see. What he saw instead was a beautifully spiraling grenade sailing in slow motion over his shoulder and bouncing comically off the hard helmet of young Private Matthews on his right. Instead of rushing to his aid, Booth threw himself away, reeling from the blast as Matthews' hungry eyes begged for an impossible salvation. Booth laid in the sand, realizing that the blisters of his boots were actually melting into the bottoms of his feet and he couldn't walk, much less run. The ironic thing is that he couldn't even feel it; it smelled bad, that much he could register. A bearded man was shaking his arm, smiling grimly, motioning the others to look at his rank and lift him over their shoulders. Booth's last thought was how completely ridiculous this was. He was only twenty-four years old.

"Booth, man, get up. Hey. Hey." The smiling bearded man wasn't smiling. In fact, as Hodgins face broke through the hazy but gut wrenching flashes, Booth realized he was lying on the floor, slumped in front of the entrance to the men's restroom. Although his head was blaring a foghorn loud enough to cause an earthquake in the next state, Booth still had the decency to be vaguely embarrassed as he struggled up with an arm on Hodgins. Booth stared at their clasped hands, wondering what it would be like to only be holding Hodgins' arm right now while the rest of him dissolved into a nice spray of pink mist.

"You okay? I saw you go in – you looked kinda…I dunno, weird man…then I heard you thump. Came here as fast as I could. Couldn't have been more than ten seconds. Pretty fast huh?" Hodgins was talking a mile a minute, his concern screaming almost as loud as Booth's headache and mounting apprehension. As a fellow male, Booth appreciated Hodgins talking around the subject, but his last line stuck with him.

_Not fast enough_, his mind whispered. Out loud, he clapped a hand to Hodgins' arm. "Thanks man, I slipped."

"That's what we're going with?" Hodgins asked in a low voice, face shrewder than Booth would have guessed possible.

"I gotta get to work," Booth muttered as he shrugged past his worried friend. Hodgins threw his hands up in the air behind him.

"See you at poker," he called.


	18. Parentals Are Just That: Rentals

The Excedrin wasn't helping. Brennan knew it was unwise to mix caffeine with more caffeine, but it didn't stop her from trying to drown her sleepless sorrows in motor oil. Or, as they liked to call it around the lab: coffee. But Brennan knew better. What she was drinking was _not_ coffee. What she needed was good wine; though a strong wine would probably cause her to nod off in a stupor. Brennan mentally weighed the pros and cons as she balefully directed her eyes onto a victim. However, this victim's case was relatively simple. The cause of death was most obviously the fire that had charred the remains. Brennan tried not to dwell on the fact that the woman was most certainly alive while afire. She consoled herself that the lack of oxygen in the burning air would suffocate the victim before the extent of the fire could reach any major organs or transcend dermal burns. She idly wondered if the woman's last moments were in terror. If it echoed the terror Brennan felt…if only there was a smoke to smother her highly saturated waking nightmares. It was so easy, after being a forensic specialist after so many years, to vividly detail what lay in wait for her, until the threat hung over her like the pallor of roiling smoke, choking her airways and lungs not with burning carbon, but fear.

She realized she had been clutching a femur tightly in a fist to the great consternation and worry of Cam. However, Brennan's preoccupation and slightly outraged terror must have shone out of the gaps in her armor- out of the holes in her skin where she hadn't tightly stitched her core together. She had been getting sloppy. Devon and his father had both attacked her patched together life heavily. She hadn't had time to hitch her facade back into place. Cam very gently but very firmly unpeeled Brennan's latex encased fingers from around the bone, wresting the coffee from her other grip and steering her towards a plastic chair.

"You should sit down," she said quietly and Brennan nodded in exhaustion, only realizing her acquiescence in the three seconds lingering after Cam's perfume. _Motherhood is kicking in,_ she thought sourly.

Something else was worming its way into her vision. Involuntarily, her fingers clutched the sandwich of their own accord. Cam smiled tightly.

"No meat, don't worry. It's peanut butter because you need the protein. You should eat, Brennan."

"Thanks Cam," she said gratefully. Yet as she stuffed the stale bread into her mouth, glancing at the clock, Brennan realized she wanted lunch. And she knew exactly where to get it. Not the diner, or even the Founding Father's. After her rocky weekend with Booth, she decisively picked a place she knew had a good cabernet.

Although Brennan had never before dreamed of drinking on the job, she felt that this warranted a special occasion. And a glass of wine would hardly compromise her abilities.

"I think I'll take a lunch break," she mused aloud, and completely missed Cam's fervent relief.

"Very good idea Dr. Brennan. But please take a security guard with you to your car."

"I'm not helpless Cam." Brennan tried very hard not to snarl, but was unsure if she was successful. "In a physical confrontation, I would most definitely have the upper hand."

"Don't be so sure," cautioned Cam, her dark eyes concerned. "Fear can make you do strange things." Brennan looked back at the burning victim. She could relate; she felt as if she was burning alive, only no one could see the smoke.

As she walked the few paces to the steps to exit the platform, Cam called out: "Dr. Brennan!" Brennan spun around, her mind reeling as she realized her faintness from lack of food simultaneously as she used a tray of instruments to hold herself upright.

"Yes?" She attempted for cavalier but had to settle for discombobulated.

"You've been told? About Poker Night? Yes, attendance is mandatory. And you have to go for Booth."

"Why?" Her usual super brain was feeling foggy. She wondered if she was getting enough oxygen.

"He has a gambling addiction." Cam smiled her usual tight lipped smile. She was almost churlishly amused.

"Had." Brennan corrected the statement automatically. "Yes I am aware."

"Regardless," Cam informed her, "I couldn't have a party for our friends and not invite him. Jared might come too. But Jared is off alcohol and Seeley's off poker."

"So…" her voice was still slow.

"So," Cam grinned, "you have to be his card holder. His team. You have to play yet still make him feel included."

"He'll soon be inebriated, I'm sure he can babysit himself until then," Brennan told her tartly.

"Can you not play poker?"

"I can." Brennan's voice was stung. "But it seems silly for us to pair up…it simply singles him out."

"How about we make it four players hmm? That way Angela, Hodgins, Jared and I can have the first go round? Then both you _and_ Booth can sit out." Brennan's lips pursed the tiniest bit. She wasn't very good at people, but she had to wonder if Cam wasn't taking the opportunity to mix alcoholic beverages (ergo lowered inhibitions,) by throwing the two partners together.

"Are you inviting Dr. Sweets?" Cam's smile hitched just the fraction of a bit.

"I didn't think to…"

"As our apparent responsibility – as he has no other family and Booth tells me that he has issues with never belonging…something about adoption – that we should strive harder to indoctrinate him into our group."

"Well," Cam blinked several times, unsure of how to respond. "Okay then. I'll give him a call. Better yet, I'll shoot him an email, so I don't have to actually –" Noticing Brennan's vacant gaze, she sighed and waved her on. "Tony!" she tilted her chin at the security guard by the glass doors. "Make sure she gets to her car safely." The security guard clapped a fist to his shoulder in a salute before peeling from his station to respectfully shadow Dr. Brennan from a discreet distance.

Brennan swung into her low sports car with a sense of purpose she had been lacking for days. The drive was short, but her radio seemed quite unable to make up its mind whether to play music or not, and Brennan had to content herself with Mayan chants and incantations – more of a research reference than actual preference – before she parked and entered the restaurant.

The hostess greeted her with a smile but a puzzled frown as she pushed past, not even seating herself.

"My friend is here," she hastily threw over her shoulder, her growing sense of urgency building upon itself. She banged open the kitchen door and to her relief saw who she was looking for: the one person who had ever made sense of her emotional quandaries.

Dr. Wyatt was, admittedly, no longer a psychiatrist, but to Brennan, that was simply an added bonus. It made her feel like she was simply seeking the help of a mentor proficient in his field rather than a crackpot behavioral scientist who based his intuition on guesses and fabricated statistics.

"Dr. Brennan," he crowed, his hat slightly askew. "What an unexpectedly pleasant surprise.

_'Let us go then, you and I,_

_When the evening is spread out against the sky_

_Like a patient etherized upon a table;_

_Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,_

_The muttering retreats_

_Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels_

_And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:_ - though I dare say my restaurant merits more than "sawdust restaurants," he chortled.

_'Streets that follow like a tedious argument_

_Of insidious intent_

_To lead you to an overwhelming question ..._

_Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"_

_Let us go and make our visit._

_In the room the women come and go_

_Talking of Michelangelo.'"_

"T.S. Elliot," she informed him, aware of the poet, yet uncomprehending of the meaning of his poetry.

"Very good," he beamed, "very good. Yes, yes, now, come 'make your visit,' so to speak. What do you need now? Some advice on a serial murderer is it?"

"What I need is a good bottle of wine and some advice on..well..._me_," she sighed, and found herself embarrassingly close to tears in the face of someone twice her senior. It was comforting, really, to be fussed over. He courteously took her jacket before immediately flinging it on another staff member to hang.

"Well," Wyatt hummed complacently. "Red or white? Oh what am I saying? With what I'm serving you, white of course. And red wine is distinctively reserved for dinners not luncheons. Now, I have the wine…and I suppose I can coax some hackneyed advice out of my foggy old brain while the little tarts bake. Come now, sit down over here." He guided her by the arm, as if she were infirm, carrying the neck of the bottle and the stem of a wineglass in the other hand. Brennan knew she was shaking just the slightest bit under his grasp, as she was nauseated by the lack of food and the sheer stress she hid from her lab. He didn't comment – leastways not yet – for which Brennan was grateful.

"You'll feel better when you have some good food inside of you. Now sit down." He drew the chair out for her, but Brennan's knees had buckled stiff. Sitting in the chair across was another person; the person she had wanted most to avoid.

"Hiya Bones."


	19. Oh Tell Me It's Not So

**Delay. Sorry. Review? Thanks.**

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Booth wasn't sure what she was doing at first. The strange staggering, the baffling sounds like little whines coming out of her mouth and her rapid blinking made no sense to him for four whole seconds as he sat there impassively watching her reel. It was only after Gordon-Gordon had dropped the wine and glasses to catch her with two hands that Booth jumped up. Surprisingly, although the glasses shattered, the wine bottle simply rolled across the floor, intact.

"Why don't you sit down Dr. Brennan," soothed the ex-psychiatrist with real concern, leading her to the chair where she half-sat and half-collapsed, not daring to look at Booth.

"It's been a long day," she managed, as Booth's hand grazed her shoulder as he bent at the waist.

"Saved the wine," he beamed and clunked it back on the table, ungracefully throwing himself into his own chair. There descended an uncomfortable silence in which the partners managed to make eye contact with every other person in the kitchen save each other. Wyatt watched them with a splendiferous sort of interest.

"I see I've missed something," he mused. "Sort of like Othello in…well…his normative play _Othello_."

"That's incorrect," Brennan snapped, a little too harshly, likewise snapping her head around as she continued. "It's not Othello's play, but rather William Shakespeare's."

"Yes…yes I see," murmured Wyatt, as if her correction was of vital importance. "But I assume you follow my analogy?"

"Not at all," seethed Brennan, her untapped frustration with Booth splintering her control towards Wyatt. Booth was terribly confused; no one at the table was black, and according to Disney's _Aladdin_, no one was a parrot.

"Unless you are planning to brutally stalk one of us down and purposefully make us paranoid and flighty until you committed an egregious mistake by strangling me, well your metaphor doesn't hold at all."

"Assuming you are Desdemona." Booth watched with interest as Brennan's jaw tightened.

"No. No, I was merely correcting your-"

"But someone is stalking you down and making you paranoid?" Booth's jaw dropped. How Wyatt could so quickly discern the problem through a conversation that seemed in Booth's eyes meaningless drivel, was astounding. He raised his voice over Brennan's protests.

"Yeah – yeah that's what I came to talk to you about Doc-"

"It's chef now, if you please Agent Booth."

"Whatever." Booth caught the chagrined and almost hurt look in Gordon-Gordon's eyes and huffed. "Fine. _Chef_." Wyatt beamed. "But someone is stalking Bones. An old foster brother and she-"

"Is _fine_ Booth," seethed Brennan, butting in. "That's _not_ what I came to talk about." Booth rounded on her, confused and his own frustration with Brennan flaring to life as it so easily and brutally had in his apartment.

"What, more secrets?"

"Oh I have secrets now?" she scoffed.

"Someone stalking you is not the kind of thing you keep to yourself."

"I wasn't keeping it to myse-" Wyatt, who had been watching their lashing tongues dueling as effectively as rapiers, cut in.

"Before you two fillet each other, try some of mine." He grandiosely served them two beautiful gourmet dishes and poured wine out of new glasses a buss boy had dropped off. The food effectively shut them both up as Booth shoveled his into his mouth as fast as he could.

"Hungry?" asked Wyatt sardonically.

"A man's gotta eat," shrugged Booth. His grin turned cocky, making a joke out of their earlier spat. "And I'm quite a man, wouldn't you say Bones?" She hardly looked at him.

"Your working out is improving your muscle tone," she conceded and Booth puffed with pride. "But you looked fine before," she continued condescendingly, as if he were indulging in something gluttonous.

"Working out are we?" hemmed Gordon-Gordon.

"Yeah," grinned Booth, his best Parker smile charming his face. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brennan look away from it as if it pained her. He instead focused on charming Gordon-Gordon out of thinking anything was – as he would say – 'amiss.' He didn't mind asking for advice, man to man, but bring a woman in…especially Bones…He remembered he was speaking and rushed to continue. "I'm pumping iron. Ripping the guns," he impressively flexed more for comedic effect than anything. "You know, crushing the competition and running it hard." He scooped up another mouthful of mashed potatoes with his steak to complete his intense regime, ready to hear the usual impressed whistle he recieved from his co-workers.

"Aggressive words," Wyatt said instead.

"What?" he asked, thrown.

"Well the diction behind them…"

"The what?"

"Word choice Booth," interrupted Brennan. "Semantics."

"Words like 'ripping,' and 'crushing.' Not to mention guns and, what was it? Oh yes, running away from something."

"I don't…" fumbled Booth. "I don't think that's what I said exactly."

"No of course not," soothed Wyatt. "But I see that you are feeling threatened by some sort of competition. Maybe for Dr. Brennan's affections?"

"What?" spluttered Booth, the white wine spraying from his mouth onto his food embarrassingly. "No – no! Why would you-" he glared and cut of his words, his anger mounting. "Look _Chef_, I'm not competing for anything. Bones is in trouble, I'm just trying to protect her."

"Really," hummed Wyatt. He turned to Brennan. "And how long has this…trouble been going on?"

"About…" she cleared her throat. Her face was still ashy and she ate around the steak. Wyatt looked immediately chagrined and interrupted.

"Oh I _am_ sorry – you are a vegetarian. Let me get something else for you." He snapped a finger as Brennan opened her mouth to protest. Booth felt a smug smile creep across his face.

"Two months?" he added innocently as a waiter suddenly handing down a steaming bowl of stir-fried vegetables distracted Brennan.

"Hmm," hummed Wyatt. He turned back to Booth, who was feeling superior and finally in control of the conversation. "And how long have you been…'pumping iron' as you say?"

"Two months," he crowed, feeling like his story was finally adding up. But he hadn't counted on Wyatt's intuition.

"Yes. And how long has he known about your – what was it? – stalker?" Brennan nodded confirmation around a mouthful of noodles and snap peas.

"Only a couple of days," she said quietly and Booth felt his fist clench on the table top of its own accord. He quickly thrust it out of sight under the table, but not quickly enough for them both not to notice.

"Really," hummed Wyatt, leaning forward. "Which begs the question of what you," he pointed at Agent Booth, "are really running from. What you came here to ask me about."

"No I…" Booth stumbled around his words, food forgotten as he gesticulated. "It's _Bones_ I'm worried about and I'm not running away from-"

"From a war?" guessed Wyatt shrewdly. Booth couldn't help it. He felt his face close off and become a glower.

"Don't be ridiculous," he grunted through gritted teeth. "Just because you read my file…I don't run from anything."

"That's true," corroborated Brennan, who had been so quiet, Booth had forgotten she was there.

"Exactly," beamed Wyatt. "Which makes you a very misguided Cassio in this situation."

"But Cassio ends up alone," said Brennan blankly. "Everyone he loves...Desdemona, his captain, everyone...is dead." Wyatt's smile dropped off his face like a stone in water.

"Yes," said Wyatt even more quietly. "Yes. Exactly."


	20. Queen of the Unseen

"Now something brought both of you to see me today," said Wyatt, more seriously than he had been all conversation. "And neither of you wanted to see each other, which veritably concludes that it has something to do with each other. My guess?" he trailed off, and Brennan noticed Booth had swallowed in synchronization with her. "Is that you," he pointed at Brennan, "are afraid of what he will see if he looks too closely at whatever _you_ are afraid of." Brennan felt the air pound out of her as if Wyatt had simply crushed her body like a tube of toothpaste, leaving her ribs splintered together like the wrinkles in the wrapping. She almost missed his comment towards Booth.

"And you – you are afraid of well…the same exact thing. Which is probably why you're having all those nightmares about your previous life. Flashes in the daytime too no doubt."

"How could you know-" demanded Booth, before Brennan saw him gluing his teeth together, his muscle spasming his jaw shut. He forced some wine through his teeth.

"I hate to be rude," smiled Wyatt gently, "but you are looking very poorly Agent Booth."

"Hey," protested Booth weakly as Brennan smiled into her own wine glass, for the first time in two months feeling safe in Wyatt's kitchen.

"Not to mention you as well Dr. Brennan." Her smile slipped off her face as Booth chortled, murmuring _told ya so_ or something such.

"Both of you look overworked and exhausted and much too thin. And you both might want to join the theatre for the heavy makeup you wear here," Wyatt dragged a finger under each eye, "and here." He dragged his fingers down the lines around his mouth. They both looked properly chastised before he resumed his serious diatribe. "Agent Booth takes his aggression out at the gymnasium and you Dr. Brennan…I assume you've cleared more ancient remains these last two months than for quite some time. You tend to throw yourself into your work." Brennan swallowed the tepid mouthful of wine she had been holding on her tongue. That was true; Cam was both exasperated and concerned at the influx of paperwork from Limbo cases Brennan had been working late into the night, much too terrified to go home long before any of her colleagues had known the danger.

"Now. I think that if you want to clear up the bad air between you two, a united front against something is better than a divided one. That is, after all, what lost Britain the colonies."

"And damn proud of it," murmured Booth into his glass as Brennan felt her face crack into a reluctant smile for the first time in days.

"Now-" Somewhere a charming _ding_ of a timer went off. "Those are my tarts. Feel free to sit here as long as you like," he put his hand on Brennan's shoulder as he pushed himself up, and Brennan knew without a doubt it was his offering of silent support just as much as it was his leverage against gravity. She swallowed, touched, but slipped into her Dr. Brennan persona to better hide the emotion from Booth. She needn't have bothered, as he was busy scowling into the last sips of his wine glass, twirling the stem between his fingers, as Wyatt finally placed two fingers of each hand on their tabletop.

"I suggest that both of you explain one sordid little thing you find so ignominious or misunderstood and I think you'll find being _misunderstood_ is more a concept imagined than reality."

Then he was gone.

"We could always leave," she offered quietly, knowing Booth hated to talk of his past. She was surprised then, when he didn't look up, or even move. Her body tensed of its own accord, knowing he was taking the first step. As always. Her heart tightened the fraction of a bit knowing she lay that burden upon him; they would never have become anything if he hadn't make the first move. They wouldn't have been partners if he hadn't requested her on more than one occasion, and been nice to her when she had screwed up by threatening a United States senator. They wouldn't have been friends if he hadn't barged into her life on the mob case and rifled through her music, air guitarred to Foreigner and effectively dissolved the tension between them. They wouldn't have been even the _more _than anything that she felt constantly zinging between them if he hadn't made the first move there as well. Her heart hurt as if someone was peeling it ventricle from ventricle into little pieces to realize that she never contributed to the relationship at all. And he loved her anyway.

Her mind shied away from that idea. _Fact_, a little voice told her coldly. _Facts are facts, no matter how undesirable or even obscenely desirable they might be. He said it aloud and you laughed in his face and had the audacity to ask that the conversation never happened as he sits everyday in agony that you can see_.

She knew what she had to do and opened her mouth simultaneously. She wasn't even sure of what story to tell until it popped out.

"I was sixteen."

The statement echoed and reverberated strangely in her ears, causing her brain to take milliseconds before puzzling out that that exact sentence had been said by him, in perfect timed concordance with hers. He looked up, shocked, a little grin at the coincidence tickling the corners of his tight lipped mouth.

"When?" she said with a rising inflection at the tone, then stopped, disconcerted, as he asked the same question. His smile washed away when she spoke, as if she had drawn his fleeting happiness in the sand of a high tide beach.

"When I really lost my virginity." His eyes darkened.

"When I slit my wrists in the bathtub." Her heart felt like its previous four pieces had been torn chamber from valve into eight. _So much blood, _reverberated through her memory and she wanted to swallow that horrible taste her brain informed her was bile but her heart knew more as disgrace at her stupidity for not seeing the truth sooner.

"I…" she faltered, but actually liked that they were taking turns, letting it out in manageable portions and not the big, sodden messes that they were. His eyes were understanding. As always. She took a breath. She needed to go first for once. "I didn't tell you because I don't consider it a sexual matter." Her tone was matter of fact but her fork was shaking. She set it down with a clang.

"What do you consider it?" she searched his sentence for any inflection of cruel ridicule but found none.

"Violence," she whispered. "I considered it the first time anyone had abused me."

"It was abuse," snapped Booth. "Sexual abuse. And trust me Bones," he gave that horrible self-deprecating laugh that had the eighths of her heart in sixteenths, "I know about abuse." She was silent and he realized, as they normally did in conversations that extended so much deeper than the words they were saying, that it was his turn.

"Pops found me. Carried me out. Jared…he didn't see. I don't think." Booth's voice became strained and rough. "He was just…just ten. The picture on my table…"

"The same year?" Booth's face twisted away from hers as he bitterly looked at a saltshaker, seeming to count the grains inside before answering.

"The same month."

"Why did…" she trailed off, not sure of how to phrase the question. Booth sighed.

"It made sense at the time…dad left two or three years before. Mom…well…" his tone made it clear that was it. Brennan viscerally remembered his _only_ confession about his father before this.

_My dad…drank_. Three words had imparted a huge portion of his life to her. And even before that, on the Vegas boxing case, he had slipped.

_Rage has nothing to do with size_, she had informed him. And he had glared at her.

_I know that Bones. You _know_ that I know that._

"You got lost," she said quietly. "Like…no one could understand."

"Oh so _now_ you get it," joked Booth, his humor morose. "Only like twenty years too late."

"Twenty three," she reminded him primly, not even smiling.

"Why didn't you…" he spoke into the dregs of his wine – if wine had dregs – but instead was viscerally reminded of blood.

"I…" Brennan faltered and noticed Booth was looking pale. She summoned the courage anyways. "I guess…I was afraid."

"You against the world?" he asked quietly.

"I was shy," she confessed in a whisper hardly heard over the hissing of meat on a stove and the clanging of soup pots and ripping of paper loaves. They were both oblivious to a set of blue eyes scrutinizing them carefully around a hanging clove of garlic. The eyes widened when the quickly chopping knife drew a little blood and the eyes became frequent darts instead of intense surveying.

"I was just invisible." For the third and final time they both resonated with the exact same syntax and word choice. They grinned at each other, and Booth made a foolish joke. The moment was gone and the tension came to hover between her eyes and around the corners of his mouth.

As they left together, Booth gallantly and foolishly extending his arm for her for the first time in weeks, Brennan inadvertently realized regardless of the stalker and her international acclaim her true self resonated with Booth's three whispered words into the soft shell of her ear.

"I see you."


	21. Downplaying Playtime

**Hey, I know I haven't updated (bad me) but I've been working on a new story (no it's not published yet). It got out of hand, and all my time for writing has been devoted to it. It's turning into a one shot but it's already a gazillion pages. So we'll see. Happy trails little angstophiles. The next chapter is what you've been craving. (Not this one, lol, sorry). **

* * *

"Do we have to?" Booth knew he was using his best Parker whine. Brennan didn't answer him and he glanced over, peeved at the lack of attention. Her elbow was resting on the window sill of his black SUV and her beautiful (though he could never compliment her aloud as he did so often in his head) blue eyes were roving the dark landscape.

"Where does Cam live again?" she asked instead, ignoring his pathetic attempt at humor to wriggle out of poker night.

"Just up here," he answered back, just as softly, the tension between them palpable. The last thing either felt like doing was playing.

Booth parked in the driveway of a modest but charming one story house behind Hodgins' 'toy car' and grabbed his partner's arm a little too hard to be considered polite as she tried to get out.

"Wait," he said in a low voice in a response to her clipped whimper of pain. Her inadvertent response was to insist she could care for herself, he knew from experience, but he glared enough at her that she sat stiffly, glowering furiously out the windshield as he cautiously exited the car. He didn't draw his gun, but he did trace the possible lines of gunfire from sniper vantage points. He carefully scoped the street for suspicious activity and even checked beneath the car (which was, in all honesty, a little over the top) for an explosive. Finding nothing, and not being tailed, he graciously opened the door for Bones who flounced down, purposefully trodding on his foot making him grimace in pain. The entire operation hadn't taken more than 30 seconds, and she was already broiling mad.

He rang the doorbell in a perfunct kind of way, to be answered with a round of cheers from Hodgins and Angela, who ushered them both inside. To Booth, it seemed Angela was forcing almost an over exertion of merriment in her interactions with Brennan, as a way to somehow impart some of her good will onto her best friend. Booth winced. Angela didn't understand that it would simply alienate her. Bones didn't get things like that.

"Who is it?" Cam's voice came from the kitchen and Booth heard the shaking of a drink mixer. Angela was looking fabulous as always in bohemian sort of skinny jeans and an extravagant strappy top. Booth was almost positive he would have remembered that much cleavage in the workplace, and picked up from Hodgins that this night was Angela's way of putting out. He coughed to hide a smile. _The ways people deal with stress_, he reminded himself.

Expecting to see Cam in a dress that may as well have been painted onto her body, Booth turned to answer the timid doorbell ring. Sweets' face was refracted into three or four overlapping images in the glass around the front door. Angela beat him to the punch, welcoming Sweets, and waving to an unseen guest whom Booth could only hear through the slamming of a car door.

"Dr. Saroyan," stuttered Sweets.

"Cam, please, tonight," dimpled Cam in her usual dark sort of humor. Booth turned and laughed outright right in time with Jared as he pulled Padme by the hand through the door. Instead of Cam's usual spandex, she was looking…_comfortable_ in grey sweat pants and a simple white v neck shirt, holding several delicious looking mixed drinks. Booth took one automatically, and just as automatically scanned for Bones to hand the twin of it to.

He was surprised to see her sitting in a chair in the corner but unsurprised to register her awkwardness. She wasn't usually at all shy, and these were her friends. Booth, usually so good at flicking through her thoughts that ran like a newsfeed (to him at least) across her face, found he had no earthly idea what she was considering. Affixing a faux smile on her face and gracefully standing – the smile looking all the more painful because of her poor social skills to properly maintain the correct gestures and posture – she came towards him and he handed his own drink to her, deftly snagging another one out of someone's hand, thinking it was Jared, and grunting in surprise to hear Sweets' whine of protest.

Booth ignored him as he murmured something inane to his partner, neither knowing what to say. Instead, he greeted his soon to be sister-in-law.

"Padme, you're looking beautiful."

"I look like a slob," she laughed. "Jared said _really_ casual from his past experiences with shot poker, and I show up in this-" she stopped to gesture to dark jeans and a sweatshirt from a university Booth had never heard of – "and then to see people looking like _that_." She jerked a thumb at Angela and even waved casually at Brennan, who was wearing what she wore to work: jeans and an oxford shirt. Brennan was dressed devastatingly casual, with just enough of her pristine white skin showing through the gap in the front to drive him wild.

"Don't feel bad," he consoled Padme. "Look at me!" He too, was dressed in jeans and a boring black t-shirt. Jared matched him in blue. "Look at Cam!" Cam dimpled at him as she unearthed a huge battered case of poker chips that made his eyes swim. Her eyes swam too, in a different way, for just the briefest of moments, at what he supposed was the look on his face. She turned away.

"Since everyone is here," she laughed, her 'administrative' voice easily carrying over the murmurs of people sipping their drinks (though Booth was pleased to note Padme had murmured her abstention as moral support for Jared), "we can begin. I say four to a round? Or five?"

"Four," chorused both Hodgins and Sweets, who then looked at each other in surprised, unsure if their motives were the same. Booth felt a tightening in his gut that he always got, right where his windshield would be if it was all smashed up, when he suspected pity.

"Us first!" chirruped Padme. "It's only fair to try to beat you when you're all relatively sober. It'll just be cheating after the first couple of shots."

"A couple," scoffed Hodgins indignantly. "Who do you think I am? Little Bear here?" He tossed his chin at Sweets who, looking younger than ever in a polo and cargos, blushed crimson while muttering he could keep up in a sort of unconvincing way. Booth almost felt sorry for him, until a snider side of his brain regaled his attention with how impressively funny it would be to see the kid drunk.

"Before we start! Ground rules!" Everyone groaned in unison.

"Can't we just play?" asked Angela petulantly. Booth heard what she really meant: _Can't we just drink already?_ She took a large swallow to compensate from the glass in her hand. As if that were her cue, Brennan also drank, looking lost and simply exhausted.

"Just hear me out people," smiled Cam tightly, as if she too, couldn't wait for the high strung crowd to loosen with alcohol. "First off. Booth isn't gambling. We'll take turns being his team." Someone sniggered and Booth shot a death glare, flexing his now impressive biceps. It stopped immediately.

"Also, Jared and Padme are abstaining from drinking, but that does _not_ make them your babysitters." Jared huffed out a surprised laugh, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

"Damn right."

Cam continued as if he hadn't spoken. "If you find a room with a bed, it's yours. Share however you like. My room is off limits people." Her eyes narrowed. "No, seriously, I put up caution tape." Everyone in the room laughed, and out of the corner of his eye, Booth was relieved to see Brennan drown out a ghost of a smile with a sip out of her toxic mixture.

"Jared," she said in a modulated tone, as Angela and Hodgins dragged Sweets into the kitchen to help line up the cards, chips and shot glasses, "If you and Padme are leaving later on…"

"We are," he assured her hurriedly.

"I just wanted to make sure no one blocked you in."

"Nah, we're parked on the curb." Booth blinked suddenly as he realized Cam had just spoken to him. He had been as silent as Brennan for the entire start of the evening. She repeated herself, obviously both annoyed and concerned.

"Are you going to be okay doing this?"

"I'm okay," he responded automatically.

"Is she?" Cam asked quietly, under her breath. Booth decided to tell the truth.

"I don't know."

"Let's get started!" came a bright chirrup, interrupting the both of them and dragging everyone's – even the unwilling Brennan's – attention to the speaker. Sweets blushed deeply again and gestured to the other room.

"Okay well…I mean I know the rules and all but I may have er- forgotten…"

"I'll explain it to you," laughed Cam, leading him away, leaving only Brennan and Booth alone in the den together. They studiously ignored each other.

"I suppose we should," Brennan made a flailing gesture at the archway into the kitchen and Booth nodded.

"Showtime," he muttered, and they both slid into their roles as they ghosted through the door. Booth laughed and smiled as he poured the first round of shots for Angela, who had (he suspected) lost her hand on purpose. Jared and Padme kindly flocked to silent Brennan. Booth forced himself to look happy. _The world's a stage_, he thought grimly. He turned to find Brennan's blue eyes boring holes into his head.

_I see you_, she seemed to accuse. Instead, all she murmured as she went to refill her glass of tequila was: "Let's play."

_At what_? He wanted to ask. Instead he downed half his beer and managed a grunt. This night had hardly begun, and all he wanted to do was leave.

Play indeed.


	22. The Affliction of the Forsaken

"Shot for you!" screeched Angela. Brennan was unsure what the definition of 'completely trashed' was, but since Hodgins kept repeating it to her over and over, and considering the ten tally marks in sharpie along Ang's forearm, she assumed her friend was over the top intoxicated.

Beet red and cheered by his companion's laughter, Sweets took a shot with Booth, who were making an unlikely team. Brennan assumed Booth had left her side after a while since she was so adept at the basic math and guestimations of probability poker required, to help out the poor young psychologist, who had more shots on both his arms than even Angela. Jared and Padme had left at midnight, after it was clear that their playing was completely unfair against everyone's inebriated brains. Cam smugly raked in the hefty pile to her corner of the table where mountains upon mountains of chips stood. She was easily winning. Brennan knew if she had been paying closer attention, was better at facial minutae to call bluffs and if she already didn't feel the unpleasant spinning sensation that came with her five successive shots as she lost hand after hand, she could be winning instead of Cam. Instead, she and Hodgins had about the same amount of chips. Angela was losing poorly and Sweets was broke.

"I think I'm going to throw up," murmured Sweets, springing from the table and running for the bathroom.

"I'll pay you ten bucks if you do it in one of Cam's favorite dresses!" roared Hodgins at his retreating back, as Angela giggled helplessly, collapsed against him, her shirt almost loosing one of her breasts. Cam swatted Hodgins a little too hard to be polite and he toppled from his chair, taking the inebriated and unbalanced Angela with him.

"Oops!" screeched Cam, louder than usual, grating against Brennan's ears as she sat stupefied. Everyone else was collapsed with laughter at the hilarity of Hodgins' fall. Brennan couldn't find the humor, her face seemingly frozen in stone, and could only wonder if he was all right. "Sorry!" laughed Cam, tears running onto her cards as she folded her head into her arms, making her outwardly look as if she were sobbing. Hodgins and Angela ignored them all however, and furiously began making out against the tile.

"Hey, break it up, break it up!" stormed Booth, irked to be on the losing team. "I want to play more!"

"You can't play," scoffed Hodgins as Angela's lips tore down a cord in his neck.

"Off! Off boy!" laughed Booth, stomping over excessively loudly and miming a kick in their direction as they rolled off each other, giggling.

"Whoa," came Sweets' voice, as he was looking a little pale. He ignored Cam's offer of more vodka and instead slurped down half a water bottle Cam had fortuitously placed on the countertop.

"If I can't play," groaned Booth, "I'll take that." He grabbed the vodka from Cam's hand, sniffed it once and yelped. "Yikes, what _is_ this stuff? Nail polish?"

"You mean…you mean…" stuttered Angela, carefully righting herself in her chair and checking her appearance. "Remover. Polish remover. Not nail _polish_." She crumpled into another fit of giggles as if this was the funniest thing in the world. Brennan watched Angela's face spin in her field of vision, circling the area that seemed to be her neck. She did not laugh. She did not find the game fun. She rarely lost, and when she did it was in a streak, making her shots frequent and giving her a headache instead of a buzz. No one else seemed to notice her discomfort though. Especially not Booth. He was too busy drinking an enormous glass half full of vodka mixed with pineapple orange juice, loudly proclaiming to anyone who could hear how delicious it was.

She knew why though. She figured Booth wanted to drown out his sorrows the only way he was allowed; not permitted to play or truly be part of the game, his only solace was in dulling all of his thoughts to a pleasant haze. Brennan knew he usually would have confided in her, but she was unapproachable. She felt she should feel bad for being so, but her numbness and increasing apathy made it hard to even lift her hands to hold the cards. She just wanted to go to sleep. She didn't want to be in the bright kitchen, with the smell of alcohol clouding the air over the table as everyone's puffed breaths laughed at something she couldn't, or wouldn't, understand. She felt lonely. Watching Booth feeling the same only increased her own solitude.

Air. That was what she needed.

"Count me out of this round," she mumbled to Hodgins, who was sitting to her right. "I'm going to get some air."

"Someone can't hold their liquor," hiccupped Sweets, who looked as if he were simply going to hug his chair and fall asleep at the table. Everyone else laughed uproariously as Brennan carefully, and holding onto the backs of furniture, made her way through a disorienting spinning world to the front door.

Outside the night was fresh and almost cool in the fall air. She felt better almost immediately and made her way down the porch steps towards Booth's big black car. She felt silly, being so paranoid, but put her body behind the front of the car to be less visible from the dark sidewalk of the night. She leaned against the grate, letting her head and titan hair tip back until it clunked against the hood of the car, and stared blissfully at the stars. They were so far away, her nystagmus from the over intoxication to her inner ear's balance, did not effect the pinpoints of light. They stayed blissfully in more or less the same place.

She heard the scuffing of footsteps and staggered upright, terror spiking through her. She knew her emotions were heightened from the imbibed drinks, and told herself to calm down. She peered through a back window and chided herself. It was only a man walking his dog. She shook off her preoccupation, but crouched lower down anyways, hiding and simply not even wanting to talk to anyone. There was a yelp and a man's voice saying, "_Shoot! No! Come back!"_

Automatically Brennan crouched as the dog trotted to sniff her shoes. She didn't emerge from behind the vehicle until the man's weary voice asked, "Did you get him?"

"Yeah," said Brennan softly, dredging up a smile from somewhere she didn't even know she still had as she walked around the car. "Yes, he came right up to m-"

She saw the cords flying mid-sentence and her slowed brain and dulled reflexes couldn't comprehend it until she felt the barbs hit her chest and sink into her flesh, spread eagling open to make them twice as painful to remove. It was a full two seconds of high voltage slamming through her system before her mind could supply the weapon: a taser.

Brennan found herself in an agony of fire. She convulsed around the wires sending alarming and harmful jolts into her system, and she could feel her skin and muscles ripping around the cruel barbs as she seized. She felt herself lose control of her bladder but could not even care as she had no voice to cry out, or draw breath. It went on, and on, unending, until the seizes relented, coming in spurts. The man's thumb flicked on and off the button, enjoying her squirming and voiceless whimpers of pain.

"They said you were quick in a fight, and to hit you from far away." The tired man's voice was no longer quiet. Brennan realized in a flash of comprehension that it should have triggered her caution to realize a man was walking his dog at one thirty in the morning. "But I just feel that this is so much more personal." He leered down at her and hit the button again. Brennan's back arched involuntarily as her stiff fingers scrabbled at the cobbled driveway, feeling the pads of her distal phalanges scrape open into weeping sores as she tore them along the stones. Her head hit the rocks over and over until she could no longer even draw breath. She didn't realize he was even abusing her until the electricity left her as quickly as it came.

The kicks to her side had to have been going on for some time, for as Brennan tried to draw a weak and useless breath to call out, she found the bottom most parts of her lungs didn't expand, crushed by fractured ribs. A stunning blow to her face left stars in her eyes; as she struggled upwards, he kicked her sideways until her shoulder hit the driveway so forcefully, she heard something pop out of place, dislocating her joints. Then he turned the volts back on until she was no longer even twitching. She was almost glad of the all consuming pain that was masking the repeated kicks and hammer fists to her abdomen. She couldn't even gasp at the hands marring the skin of her breasts with handprint bruises. Instead, the fire of blinding light soon took away even her sight. She waited to either loll unconscious or for death, seeing the world in a swimming haze of black spots on a white screen. She dimly felt something tearing, and she assumed it was her shirt. She wondered if he would rape her before she perished. Her apathy and desire for it all just to _end_ came to a head as she came to her senses.

It was the stars that told her she wasn't underground rotting in a coffin. The white and black had faded to black and white. After a long minute her brain informed her of the nature of the gas giants billions of miles away overhead. Awareness crept in like a fog. Her hand immediately went to her jeans. The button was still fastened.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Rapists usually didn't reclothe their victims. Her hand meandered upwards over a dull ache of bruises in her lower abdomen. She was surprised to find her shirt still buttoned as well. She could have sworn something ripped. Then her hands came away red. She jerked her head up, gasping at the nausea and the sight.

The two twin holes from the taser barbs had left one inch gashes a hands width apart, one over her right breast, and the under just under her left. They were bleeding profusely through her white camisole underneath. Brennan told herself sternly not to weep as she explored her injuries further without sitting up. Her ribs on one side were broken. Ignoring her pain, she probed forcibly, guessing that four were fractured, and some perhaps caved in. Her lack of asphyxiation told her that her lungs were unpunctured and she would not need surgery, only someone to pop them back into place. She winced as she felt her bruised shoulder, realizing it too, would need to be rejoined to her socket.

Her head felt as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. A large bump ran across her forehead on her left side, raised almost a millimeter and ending over an eyebrow and the bridge of her nose. Another bruise almost connecting ran down her left jaw as well, causing it to be puffy, swollen and for Brennan to cough blood out pitifully an inch from her face.

She wondered how long she had been absent. She wondered why no one was looking for her. _No one is looking because no one remembers you._ The snide voice was her long time companion; it was usually right. Tears that had nothing to do with her injuries sprang to her eyes. She told herself flintily that no one was going to rescue her.

She slowly, with much wincing and cradling of her dislocated right arm, sat up. Using a door handle from Booth's car, she levered herself off the ground and took the first few tottering steps guiding her ravaged fingertips along the hood. She didn't even have the energy to glance around if anyone was watching.

She made it to the house without tripping and through the door to the raucous noise of shot poker still in effect. Sweets was passed out on the front couch and Brennan stuck her head through the archway. Hodgins and Cam were the only ones awake. Apparently, Booth and Angela had retreated for sleep. Brennan's quick eyes took in the time on the oven. It wasn't even two.

"I'm going to bed," she informed them. They jovially called after her without even looking up from the scorecard they were bent over; both had hands on each others backs and were laughing. They did look up as she walked away though, and seeing nothing amiss from the back, went back to their task to find the winner before turning in as well.

Unfamiliar with the house, Brennan didn't even have the energy to tell them what had happened. They were all inebriated, and she didn't care for the fuss and completely useless help of an ambulance. She didn't care to give a statement to the police. She had no idea what the man looked like or even wore; it had been very dark. And she knew without a doubt they would never find him. Her only consolation was that at least it wasn't Devon.

She often had felt this way in the past; emotionally as thrashed as she was physically tonight, returning home to a foster house was akin to walking alone through this unfamiliar one. A stranger everywhere she went, even in her own 'home', no one ever noticed her agony, forcing her to care for herself as best she could. In her world, withdrawing was better protection than taking time to learn the complicated rules of social interactions. She remembered often how she had felt after Devon's "games." Soiled, dirty, and in need of a shower. She could sit for hours under hot water, her skin boiling red, and never feel clean. She could come home and do twice the amount of organic chemistry problems necessary, and never drown out the cruel taunts of her classmates. It was no stranger then, to walk down the hall of a house she didn't know, after being mugged on the street.

No one cared, and no one noticed. She felt a distant anger at herself for ever expecting otherwise. But more prominently, she felt disgust to expect anyone to care enough about another person at all. Much less her.

After all, her parents hadn't.

Or her brother.

So why should Booth? Or Angela? Or even the young therapist? What did it matter?

Brennan pushed open the door to the first room she came to and almost smiled at the pretty purple walls and the silk comforter Angela was snoring atop. Instead, Brennan simply took off her shoes and socks, and feeling her sopping jeans, felt only vaguely embarrassed for losing control. She stripped those off as well, her methodical actions and complete numbness a far better shield than her cowering terror shaking far inside her soul, threatening to rip her fragile life apart at the seams. She fortified her apathy, feeling her heart retreat, as she found the bathroom and carefully hung up her underwear, jeans and managed to wrestle out of her oxford with only a few tears when stretching her ribs and yanking over her useless arm and hot, puffy shoulder. She refused to look in the mirror but something black on her tanktop made her look down as she walked, almost naked and completely uncaring, back to Michelle's room.

As she rifled through Michelle's drawers and unabashedly borrowed athletic shorts, Brennan tried to puzzle out the upside down and crude marks to her white camisole that had been put there with thick black sharpie. Only as she lay down under the covers besides serene Angela, did Brennan finally piece together what it said.

Her stomach felt sick and she felt blackness rushing in. She didn't fight unconsciousness, wanting only to forget those words until she woke in the morning.

_Your brother says hello…BITCH. _


	23. Open Up My Eyes

Booth wanted to die. He peeked at the clock across the room and groaned. _Holy shit_, he closed his eyes again, _six am?_ He opened them blearily to make sure. Yep. Cam's bedroom clock seemed right. He tried to lever his head a few more inches. Yep. She was still snoring. He let his battered head hit back down again, clunking it against the hardwood floor of her bedroom. He had made himself a bed of pillows and blankets, but predictably rolled off it sometime in the night. Angela had already claimed Michelle's bed, and poor kid Sweets had collapsed on the couch snoring. Booth figured Cam wouldn't care so long as he wasn't _in_ her bed; he couldn't have Brennan hurting for anything _he_ had caused. He wondered if it would even bother her. He wondered where Hodgins had slept. He wondered why the hell he was awake at six in the fucking morning with a hangover that felt as if the Monty Python Knights of Ni were battering a castle and his forehead was the front door.

_Go to sleep_, he told himself firmly, shutting his eyes, _to sleep!_ He breathed quietly for a long time. He thought of things to do with Parker on his weekend. He thought of ways to cheer Brennan up. He thought of new workouts to try at the gym. He groaned again and glanced at the clock. 6:08. _Why?_ He whimpered.

All he wanted was someplace cool and dark; he had that. He was sheltered from the blinds by the bedskirt, and the wood was soft against his face. He grumbled and flipped over a couple of times.

"Stop it," grunted Cam sleepily at his incessant tossing. He gave up. Six am or not, he was far too used to being awake from nightmares to so easily fall asleep as he used to. He gritted his teeth. Might as well get up and make the morning as tolerable as possible for everyone else.

He crept from the room, his forearm shielding his eyes and thundered/fell/tripped down the stairs. No one even stirred. Unfamiliar with Cam's new kitchen, he opened every drawer he could find and left them that way, so that he wouldn't repeat the process four and five times looking for things.

The coffee pot was easy enough to use. The kitchen table was a mess. Cam had won by a landslide. Bitch.

Booth sighed and gulped down the room temperature bottled water in two or three long swigs. After feeling his burning throat slightly slaked by five asprin and two bottles of agua, he rooted around for a trash bag and methodically began cleaning up, enjoying watching the clock ticking past seven. He made a big plate of eggs that were slightly runny so he could finish cooking them for everyone when they were awake; he left the skillet full on the stove. There was only turkey bacon, which he microwaved with great reserve, but found to be delectable. After two helpings of eggs, seven pieces of bacon and three cups of coffee, it was closer to 8:30. He heard a rustling and a very placid looking Cam paced in. She didn't look to have nearly the hangover he did. How she could drink him under the table (or at the very least, keep up), was a mystery. Why she was up so early was another.

"Oh, around our house, getting ready for work and school is tantamount to this time of day. Old habits I guess."

"You won?" he grunted, as he graciously stood to heat up some of the eggs and finish them off with some cheese and peppers she wordlessly handed him out of the fridge. She lifted a couple pieces of turkey bacon off the plate and grabbed half a bagel with her coffee. Booth had no idea how her bones could stick out of her latté skin with how much she ate.

"Yep," she murmured around food, gulping her coffee down black, making Booth wince.

"Good night?" he asked with a grin. She laughed.

"Everyone seemed to have a good time."

"What about Brennan?"

"We didn't see her much. She played and then cashed in after she said she felt sick. Probably from that losing streak she had for a while. She went outside to get some air."

"Did she fall asleep outside?" asked Booth in serious alarm, perking up, his hangover finally demolished after two hours.

"Oh no," smiled Cam cheekily, "she came back in when everyone had bailed and me and Hodgins were tallying. She said goodnight and we saw her walking down the hall. She looked exhausted from the back, so we just let her go."

"That's good," he murmured. "Yeah, she hasn't been sleeping much."

"I do not blame her," dimpled Cam.

They were quiet, both drinking more coffee.

"Tv?" he finally suggested and she laughed.

"Yeah." Booth felt unshaven and gritty from too much alcohol last night, but Cam, irritatingly enough, looked exactly the same as she had at the start of the evening, flawless in an unstained white v-neck and grey sweatpants. The only difference was her hair had come down when she had crawled into bed.

"Looks good," he gestured, and she touched it, as if surprised to find it there and blushed slightly.

"Thanks." He knew better than to press his ground. Cam was as awkward with compliments as Brennan. They watched a ridiculous medical drama for a while, Cam narrating all the inconsistencies, and rolling her eyes at the miraculous cures and miracle surgeries, detailing how completely incorrect it all was. Booth enjoyed her commentary more than the actual show, and wondered if doctors in real life really got that much action in the on call rooms as they did on tv. When he asked, Cam laughed.

"The beds in the on call rooms are for sleeping," she informed him sternly, but with a twinkle in her eye. "If you want to sleep together, that's usually only if there aren't any beds and you've been up for more than 24 hours. Once I was so exhausted I slept in the same bunk as my worst enemy."

"Did you sleep together?" asked Booth slyly. Cam smiled smugly into her cup of coffee, clearly letting him make up his own mind about the definition of "sleeping together."

"I smell bacon and salvation," moaned Hodgins staggering into the room a moment later; it was almost ten now.

"I can get this one," smiled Cam, gesturing. "You rest." Her hand on his shoulder briefly dug her nails into his skin as if to emphasize how little he fooled her. Booth felt vaguely ashamed for even trying. She had guessed correctly when he had given up his Rico bust to cover on Jared; he hadn't even spoken to her that day. He felt selfish and petty for even trying to pretend now.

"No, I'll help," he insisted, jumping up.

"Seeley," she frowned.

"Camille," he frowned right back, exaggerating his scowl until her tongue made a little bulge along her lower lip as she tried to keep from smiling. She shrugged nonchalantly and turned her heel on him; he followed her to the kitchen where Hodgins was nursing coffee, his face resting against the cool marble of the countertop. His day old scruff was worse than Booth's.

"Did I hear coffee?" said a hesitant voice. All three turned as Hodgins, against his better judgment to his obvious hangover, began chuckling at the sight of Sweets.

The poor boy's eyes were bloodshot and puffy; his cheeks were sallow and his lips blistered from salt and lime wedges. His hair stuck out at odd angles as if gelled there and he looked as if he could barely stand. Pity overcame Booth and he brotherly took Sweets' upper arms and sat him in a chair as if he weighed no more than a rag doll. He knew how the kid liked his coffee without asking, although Sweets' exaggerated face of surprise informed him that he had surprised the psychologist yet again. The steaming plate of eggs and bacon, plus Cam had made toast for Hodgins as well, helped puff up Sweets' spirits. Booth clunked down some aspirin, twice the usual dosage, and Sweets swallowed it without complaint. Hodgins did the same, groaning. Their breakfast was a silent affair of suffering, although in about an hour, both felt pretty much normal and were seeing to their appearances in the bathroom.

"Booth?" called Hodgins, and Booth strode down the hall to where his voice echoed from.

"What?" he asked distractedly. Hodgins gestured at the shower with a smile.

"Did you get lucky last night and not _tell_ me?" Booth looked at him blankly. "These are Dr. B's jeans. I recognize the acid stain. Why would she take off her pants and shirt if not for…" Hodgins trailed off suggestively.

"No," said Booth shortly, irritated at Hodgins' insinuations. "I slept on the floor of Cam's room. She slept with Angela. I think."

"Speaking of Angela," said Cam's voice behind them, peering at Brennan's clothes with surprise. "We should wake her up. It's past eleven."

"Uh…" stammered Hodgins, backing out of the room. The two followed, though Booth's eye had snagged on something red on Brennan's clothes but he had left the bathroom so quickly, and hadn't been paying attention that he didn't regard it. It came to him in a flash of embarrassment and amusement. _That time of the month – that's why she's acting so weird. _It would explain the red too. Booth almost cracked a grin at her expense, but instead tuned into Hodgins' reticence to wake Angela.

"It's dangerous," he said urgently, quietly, as they were outside the closed door. "Scary much. I mean, _I _don't want to do it. _You_ do it." He gestured at Cam who immediately backed away too.

"No, no, no, no. I see Angela in the mornings when she's already up and dressed. That's bad enough. Hungover and groggy? _Definitively _not in my playbook. Make Sweets do it." Sweets, who had come upon them without Booth noticing, blanched.

"I…uh…"

"I'll do it," snapped Booth, irritated with their indecisiveness. The other three crouched closer as his hand closed over the doorknob. Booth twisted it slowly, building suspense to enjoy their expressions as if they were in a horror movie, before grandly thrusting the door inwards.

Brennan was facing them; Booth felt himself scream. It was not manly, but rather screeching and terrifying and simply _pain_. It clawed out of him like a bullet from a gun was slowly drilling itself in a spiral out of his forehead.

Her arm dangled off the bed and Booth didn't need to have medical training to know that arms were not designed to twist the way hers did. The fingers at the end were bloated and purple, and her shoulder enhanced the whiteness of her camisole by showing off a spectacle of dark purple bruising from her collarbone to the top of her bicep. Her hips were twisted onto the bed, but her shirt was ridden up one side. Dark bruises lined her stark hipbones, resting in the valley of her taut abdomen. Her face had matted blood on it, and a thick sausage like raised lump ran across half of her forehead, ending in a blur of dark blue down one perfect jaw line. Her camisole was ripped and stained with blood that had dripped onto the sheets. But all of those were afterthoughts in Booth's memories; what caused the wordless cry of terror was that Brennan's eyes were open. They were lidded, as if she were in the middle of blinking and her glassy blank stare was focused on the doorway.

Booth's heart had stopped when he saw only that her eyes were open.


	24. Sickness Will Pass but the Memories Last

**It was done yesterday but the internet was out. Also...It got long. **

* * *

It was the screaming that woke her. She groaned, lifting a hand to rub her eyes only to realize there was a funny dead weight down one arm, and the nerves clearly no longer connected. Her eyes felt gritty and she knew she must have been sleeping with them half open again, a trait that had terrified many foster homes and especially her brother Russ.

Booth's outrage didn't make sense to her. She heard a thump on the floor and briefly saw Angela scrabbling away, the covers with her as she staggered in pain and horror. Brennan's only ability to move was to angle her body flat against the bed instead of half turned. Her muscles screamed. She blinked again, her world in white, and the noise in it too loud to be allowed.

"How did this happen? Who did this? Oh God you're alive, thank God you're alive thank-" Brennan tuned in and to her shock that would have made her jaw drop if it were not almost welded shut from stiffness and swelling, Booth was crying. Standing, screaming, beet red and sobbing, he reached to shake her. His questions went from frantic to furious in a heartbeat and escalated in pitch until her eyes had slid shut again, as if only to shut out the world like a child. _I can't see you, so you can't see me._ She only wished it worked that way. She heard a strange sound, like flesh connecting with bone and opened her eyes in time to see the tail end of a fantastic punch by Cam, who had decked Booth quite impressively.

"Seeley would you _shut the fuck up_?" she screeched over his protests. He didn't fall, but sprang to the balls of his feet as if ready for a fight. Before anyone could ask why Cam had punched Booth she continued in a low, authoritative and modulated tone. "Does no one realize I was a cop? And a detective in homicide. _And _a federal coroner. _And_ I graduated medical school with honors. Clearly as both the doctor and the cop, I should be the one screaming the questions." Booth's face drained of color even as Brennan watched and he slumped backwards, aging years as he staggered to a purple bean bag and sank into it numbly.

There seemed to be a collective breath as Cam sat next to Brennan's arm and her gentle fingers began running over her injuries as she spoke soothingly.

"Brennan, do you know when this happened?"

"Hi," breathed Brennan. Her brain worked furiously; what a completely inadequate answer. What was wrong with her? But her tongue felt thick and her words dripped off of it like molten iron, thudding against the ground before they could become more than monosyllabic.

"Hi," said Cam, smiling back calmly. Brennan realized suddenly Cam had a beautiful smile. In fact, she had never noticed, but Cam was actually quite beautiful in general. She tried to shake herself from this apparent and inconvenient stupor. What was wrong with her, to be thinking about teeth at a time like this?

"These…" she tried feebly, and she felt a collective lean in of bodies towards her, although she could only see Cam, who blithely listened while lifting her shirt gingerly, her face unchanging. Brennan idly wondered if Booth could see minutiae of changes as Cam viewed her injuries. "These…are Michelle's shorts. Sorry," she breathed. Her body relaxed, exhausted from the effort. Her jaw hardly moved. She wondered if the words were even intelligible.

"Why did you change?" asked Cam conversationally, flinging up a hand with its palm spread wide. Brennan was momentarily confused by this action, wondering if it were a social gesture she was unfamiliar with. She then realized Cam was forestalling the others to question her, and let her go at her own pace.

"I…was wet." She gestured numbly at her camisole. "When a taser hits your central nervous system-" she never finished her words because they were drown out by Booth springing to his feet and bellowing obscenities in such vivid language, Brennan had to wonder why he wasn't the author instead of her.

"I understand," Cam saved her again from a tiring explanation. "And did you see the man?"

"It…was dark," whispered Brennan. "I felt sick…I didn't like…" to her mortification, tears sprang into her eyes. "I had to…the world…spinning so much…wanted to lie down and look at…look at…look at…" she gestured upwards inanely, unable to even find the most basic of words. A tear rolled down her cheek.

"The stars," supplied Cam. And Brennan nodded shakily, gratefully. "How did he find you? Were you walking alone?"

"Not…stupid," panted Brennan, feeling like she was being crushed and not knowing why her lungs couldn't expand properly. "Hiding."

"You were hiding," repeated Cam, as if this was a perfectly comprehensible answer. "Where were you hiding?"

"In front of…Booth's car."

"Why were you hiding?" Brennan didn't answer, but her face was so filled with terror, Cam couldn't stop herself from reaching out and gently swiping her thumbs down Brennan's face as if she were a very young child, slowly slaking the tears from her pale, mottled skin. The gesture made Brennan cry a little more.

Booth's roar interrupted them. It seemed he had had enough of being patient.

"_Why? _Why would you talk to him? Why would you approach him? _Why didn't you deck him like Cam decked me?_ It was the middle of the freaking night – what were you-"

"He had a dog," whined Brennan, as if this were of vital importance. "I…dog…got away. Didn't…wasn't…spinning…so tired…God so tired…there was a dog…" she was sobbing now.

"Seeley." Cam spun around and took a calming breath. Brennan heard the murmured words of 911 before she groaned.

"I'm fine. I don't want to give a statement. I…I…" she couldn't speak, couldn't see what was going on until Hodgins stepped into her view.

"You what?" he asked gently, taking her good hand in his.

"I can't breathe," she gasped. "Why can't I? Oh God I….Hodgins…" his name was a whisper and Brennan's brain was flooding in panic. "The gravedigger…" she clawed at her face pathetically as if pushing dirt away, trying to draw breath. She whimpered as her sensitive, shredded finger pads made contact with her face.

"No," said Hodgins firmly, seeing the terror he felt but had thus far assumed only afflicted him, suddenly dancing in her face and waltzing through her eyes. "No. You're unable to breathe from broken ribs."

"What?" she wheezed, as if she had woken in a horror story.

"There is no gravedigger," repeated Hodgins firmly. "We put her in jail. She's gone."

"There's a man…" said Brennan softly, and Cam's murmuring to Booth stopped suddenly, and all three leaned into her field of vision. "And…" her breath hitched. "He's crucified to the wall…the skin…hanging from his arms…I'm hurt…" she said the last information as if suddenly realizing she was there, running her fingers over her injuries. She missed the startled and confused glances the room was trading. "I need to run…something bad happened here…" she gave a hitched sob and made eye contact with Booth as if trying to impart knowledge, "…I got away."

"That's over," he said firmly, and he moved to her side, taking her hands. The others blinked, completely confused. "That was New Orleans. That was almost five years ago. That isn't happening. I know what it's like Bones, to see it like it's really happening, but don't look at that. Look at me."

"I…" she faltered, and her eyes roved over the air, seeing things no one else could.

"Look at me," commanded Booth. His face was swimming before her, ringed in a white frame of his funeral card. She was crying the tears she had never shed in front of him. She wondered if he knew what she had gone through.

"Look at me," he instisted more loudly; his grip was hurting her arms. "Right here, don't look over there. Look right here." He pointed to his eyes and she saw flashes of other lives, other lifetimes of terror and of terrorists, of cadavers and murder victims, of bones and grinning skulls; and she saw him in his eyes. Brennan came to herself with a start, confused. She felt her puffy face.

"I could use some advil," she croaked.

"Ahead of you," smiled Cam, shoving Booth aside. "And the ambulance is on its way."

"No," whimpered Brennan.

"If you talk to me," said Cam very softly, "I will give them your statement." Brennan was so grateful she felt hot tears leaking from her eyes. Not trusting her voice, she very gingerly nodded her head against the pillow case.

"Start from where we were interrupted while I help you sit up." She snapped her fingers at someone Brennan couldn't see. Angela, sobered by the events and by several coffees , sank down on Brennan's other side. Together, they laced arms behind her back and slowly began levering her up, helping her readjust herself to accommodate her dislocated shoulder and broken ribs.

"Fix them," panted Brennan at Cam, sweat rolling down her arms from her stark pain. Cam tried to protest and Brennan let out a half sob, half scream. "Please." She hated to beg. There was a hesitation and Brennan felt fingers digging into the soft but bruised flesh of her side.

"This will hurt."

"Understood," she gritted out.

"One by one," cautioned Cam, and nodded at Angela to start levering her up slowly. Brennan yelled through clenched and aching teeth as two of Cam's fingers lifted her broken rib and popped it into its rightful place. She repeated it once more, but only once, until Brennan was slumped against her, drooling heavily out of her contusions along her left mandible. Cam didn't even protest, but helped lift her incredibly heavy head up. Her shirt was wet down one shoulder; far away, Brennan could almost summon the vague shame of being socially inappropriate.

"What I thought," said Cam softly, her gentle fingers still knotted in Brennan's titan hair. "Heavy bruising. Most probably a major concussion. It explains the slurring and the speech."

"Cobblestones," sighed Brennan. She saw Hodgins wince, and felt Angela do the same. Cam's face darkened before she carefully neutralized her expression, seeming to not want to scare Brennan.

"I can do a better job popping your dislocated shoulder back into place than the paramedics can," offered Cam. Brennan nodded.

"You might be sick," warned Cam. Angela silently ghosted from Brennan's side to retrieve a bowl as Brennan, gasping less now that she could sit, outlined briefly what had happened.

"You know what your shirt says right?" asked Cam and Brennan nodded queasily. "We need to take it as forensic evidence and keep it for the police." Brennan nodded tiredly again. Cam spoke in an undertone to Hodgins and suddenly scissors appeared. "It will be better if we slice it up the back and take it off before blood flow returns full force to your arm." Mute now, Brennan nodded her assent, feeling nothing more than exhausted apathy. It was nice to have someone care for her, even if it meant treating her like a child. She kind of liked that; it was a completely new experience. Cam made move to start slicing, but as she moved her body away from Brennan, Brennan sagged, unable to even support her own weight.

"Booth," ordered Cam, but she hadn't needed to speak. Booth had taken her place instantaneously; he was a quiet soldier now in the face of a commander. Brennan whimpered, and her good arm came up to shield herself from him. She knew Booth had been in the room, but his strong warmth, his beautiful radiating _heat_ was threatening to unravel the shred of control Brennan was clutching. She began to shake, swiftly moving her forearm around the front of her body, not sure of what to cover most from him. Her arm hovered over the letters, the blackened bruises, her dislocated shoulder, before vibrating in front of her taser barb wounds.

"I don't want him to see," she said in a whisper, turning her face away in shame to Angela. She caught a glimpse of Sweets, completely forgotten until now, sunken ashen into a chair, his eyes glued to the scene as if it were a car wreck and the human instinct was to _look_ when every other instinct screamed _look away_.

"Brennan don't be silly," Booth's voice sounded like a bucket of gravel grating against sandpaper. "I've seen you nak-" his sentence fell away and there was a palpable sense of held breath confirming suspicions. "Not like that," finished Booth crossly, more peeved than outrightly angry, in Brennan's opinion. She was too tired to feel anything, not even embarrassment. He didn't understand; she had nothing to hide from him by taking her shirt off. Obviously.

"I don't want him to see," she repeated, and cursed her stupid tongue for not finding another way of saying it, instead of sounding so vulnerable and pitiful.

"You don't want to hurt him." Cam's voice was low, and matter of fact. Brennan nodded imperceptibly. There was silence, and she could feel Booth shaking although she couldn't put her finger on why. Her thoughts became side tracked; what an odd phrase 'to put one's finger on.' She wondered how it originated.

"Would Hodgins be allowed to see?" asked Angela quietly, the first words she had spoken thus far. Brennan only considered it a moment, without looking into the burning eyes she could feel raking over her injuries as she pathetically tried to screen from him the worst, she nodded.

"No," growled Booth. "I can't leave her."

"You have to talk to the paramedics," reasoned Cam. "Sweets cannot." Her voice was simple and brooked no argument. Brennan realized suddenly Sweets was frozen in place, much the same as he had been ten minutes before when the encounter had begun. She wasn't sure, but she suspected his reaction not to be considered normal.

"I can't," begged Booth, and Brennan was shocked to realize he sounded like he had at the beginning – as if he were crying. She couldn't crane her neck to look; she couldn't even lift her head. All she could do was clutch her arm in front of her, lightly resting the hand on her burning, swollen shoulder and keep her blackened face out of sight, eyes on the ground.

"I don't want him to see," she whispered for the third time. "He can't _see_ me." She put the emphasis on, unsure if her words made sense. They evidently did not; not to anyone but Booth. With an anguished clipped cry, he stood, teetering at the doorway.

"I'll be right back," he warned her; they could all hear the sirens.

Hodgins held her up as she heard the careful sound of metal on metal, softly scraping as the camisole fell lightly away in two halves. They gingerly dragged it over her arms and Hodgins made a slight gagging sound when he saw her beaten, broken body.

"God," said Angela, not even managing her usual "Oh. My." With the appellation.

"She could have internal bleeding," noted Cam.

"Unlikely," contradicted Brennan. "Or I would have died while asleep." Angela began to weep next to her, bewildering her already fogged mind.

"Why are _you_ crying?" she asked, unsure if her inflections were coming off as rude.

"I was right there," sobbed Angela. "Sweetie, you could have woken me…you should have…"

"Don't even go there," said Hodgins tightly, "I was the last to see her awake…if she had died…I would have been the last to…to…I didn't even stop…didn't check…"

"Stop it." The words were soft and unassuming, but it stopped the guilt in its tracks as everyone turned in shock to Sweets, Brennan flailing between them, feeling the world spin much as it had the previous day. She dimly heard Booth arguing with the paramedics. They were asking if she could have imagined the encounter and simply fallen. Booth was shouting. She tuned in again to Sweets' whispered tirade to help her friends take heart. "…have to help her. We can't sit and play 'could have' and 'should have.' It doesn't work like that. For once in your life, this is not about you." His words were cold and biting, and most unlike the young psychologist. However, it was exactly, it seemed, what her best friend needed to hear. Angela hugged her tightly before helping her readjust to sit up in order to breathe better.

"If we're going to do this, let's do it now," said Cam tightly. Brennan noticed her grief was of a quieter, more deadly kind. Cam had not said a word; but Brennan almost smiled thinking that Booth would have held his hands to his temples, mocking that Cam was screaming in her head.

"I'm going to brace you," warned Hodgins, sliding his thighs around her hips and holding her good arm tightly to her broken ribs and her other whole ribs with his hand.

"I'll twist and pop it," said Cam, working into position even as she explained. Before Brennan had even so much as nodded, the fiery jolt had her coughing and crying, feeling nerves twist as bone grated against bone, working its way through the sore rotary cuff and blood flowed into the stagnant pools of the area. Her arm felt as if someone had branded it, and as more blood flowed through swollen veins, pumping long congealed blood, the worse it became. Brennan gestured frantically for the bowl, realizing the fire at the pit of her stomach had come racing to her tongue.

Angela, surprisingly unflinchingly - though Brennan's tiny portion of her still functioning and detached mind supplied Angela's rather colorful college years as evidence – held the bowl out while she vomited. At first glad it was over, she was soon was sobbing afresh at the agony of both her arm, and of her contracting stomach around internal and external bruises. The bile working its way past her cracked ribs burned as it came streaming out of her mouth. Soon there was nothing but spittle and crushed air as she helplessly gagged over and over, feeling as empty as she had metaphorically when Dr. Wyatt had guessed her fears about Booth.

When she came back to herself, she realized there were strangers in the room and Cam was stroking her forehead understandingly. She groaned, seeing Booth standing in the doorway, watching as one would breathlessly watch a cardio-vascular resuscitation.

"I haven't thrown up this much since the abortion clinic," she joked. She realized the joke had fallen flat when she realized the looks on everyone's faces. Her one shining corner of clarity was raging against her concussed mind to stop spewing her pitiful dark secrets.

"You had an abortion?" whispered Angela in horror and shock, as someone put a cold stethescope to Brennan's chest, obscuring her vision.

"Sophomore year of high school," said Brennan. Her voice was emotionless, apathetic, how she felt after being drugged, and also how she liked to look at those emotions, with a sort of detached clarity that came from shoving them into tiny sealed jam jars in her mind, able to admire and gawp through warped glass.

"Was it…" agonized Booth.

"Yes," she said softly. "I didn't even have a car to drive me there…and everyone in high school...well, you were at the reunion…they hated me. I took the bus. Afterwards…" tears were in her eyes and she paid them no mind, only caring to look anywhere but at Booth. "I was so sick I couldn't think of going back to that…that…house. I couldn't face…I couldn't….so I spent the night in a neighboring church. It was cold and I was so scared. I felt…dirty." Her mind was thrashing furiously to stop her confession, but her tongue wagged blithely on. "I had never killed anyone before. Rationally speaking, though I don't believe in souls and only sentient ability, and though I don't have any problems with abortions…at sixteen…I still felt…" she trailed off as the paramedics hoisted her onto a stretcher. Her eyes unfocused. She let herself follow the wisp of dream into old memories, fond ones where no one could touch her. She liked the pretty lights on the ceiling and the mask descending on her face smelled sweet.

It was at the last moment did it occur that the mask blocking out the light looked exactly like a hulking shape coming to crouch on her chest. Then it was upon her, and she was locked in unconscious terror.

Only at the last possible second before she slipped into nightmares did her brain supply the word she had felt: guilty.


	25. Death Entices Me, Rage Suffices He

It was brainless really, the way he would like to see that man's skull after he slowly scalped him and scooped his brain matter out a spoonful at a time. Somewhere distantly, Booth remember Brennan had informed him that the brain had no pain receptors; his mood darkened but feasted on the glory of watching a baseball bat explode through the imagined skull like a vaulted cantaloupe.

It was nice to reflect on pain as he mercilessly cracked his healing knuckles against the boxing bag, enjoying the feeling of them rebreaking over and over and over again. Brennan was still in the hospital somewhere; she had requested that he be barred from her room and from her sight. Booth grimaced with the pain and the feeling of the sweat running into the little cuts along his forearms after he had put his unbandaged fist through every window in his apartment._ Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. _He should have known; people unwinding, laughing…it would have put her on the outsider's edge. It was everything that was foreign to her. It was a family, and he had excluded her when she needed the inclusion most of all. And all he could care about was his stupid reenactments of war. So who cares if half blown faces loomed in the reflections of the FBI refrigerator magnets. Who cares if the crunching of broken glass reminded him sharply of combat boots on soldier's bones as he tread over them mercilessly, letting the animals sanctify their grave more than any priest.

Booth glowered at the innocent punching bag. The clock was irritatingly screaming the time at him. It was five in the morning. The next morning. He had been at the gym for eight hours. He knew his reactions were beyond normal but who was he supposed to talk to? He sneered at the idea of burdening the poor broken psychiatrist any further. Sweets had adamantly stayed in Brennan's room, hardly speaking but looking as furious as Booth felt. Booth had laughed derisively at that protection. Cam had smoothly pulled his own gun out of his hip holster and directed it at him; he had rarely, if ever, seen her so grim or so angry. Her threat was genuine in face of Brennan's shame. He had slunk off their watch with no where to go.

"Sir…"

"WHAT?" he exploded, rounding, his fist locked dead center for the intruder's face. She flinched involuntarily. It was the young, pretty trainer. She was just a kid. She looked half his age. He had to remind himself he was getting old. She was probably mid twenties but he almost felt a surge of smugness at her terror; she had obviously never seen the world. She was still trapped in that cute bubble of naivete before the world rips you apart and laughs.

"Sir…I just wanted to offer this…" she proffered a bag of trainer's ice and elastic tape, the kind Booth had been bandaged in more than once on the field during high school. He reigned in his temper as he stood, heaving in rage, shoulders shaking and aching. He didn't know long he had been beating the crap out of an inanimate object. His mind flashed briefly to the previous night but he wrenched it away, reaching clawed fists towards the ice, surprised to find his fingers wouldn't even open. She gently uncurled their spasms and put the ice in his palms. He hissed in surprise and pain at the contact. He didn't know whether it was from the ice or her touch.

"Thanks," he muttered darkly.

"And this," she said, proffering a pocket sized vial of vodka. Enraged, he snatched it from her nimble fingers and flung it against the far wall where it shattered. She squeaked and jumped back. Booth came to his senses. Jesus Christ, he was off his rocker. And turning into his father – throwing alcohol, shattering things.

"Shit," he cursed quietly, and slouching, began sweeping the fragments with his stiff fingers into his palms.

"It's okay," she was back again, quiet. She had a dustpan and a handheld broom sweep. "No, don't do that you'll…" she trailed off and he looked down. Blood was welling in all the creases of his flesh where his fists had inadvertently curled around the shards of glass. "I'll get the tweezers." She sounded unsurprised, even resigned. As if this happened all the time. Booth was almost surly he hadn't been thrown from the gym. He would have dearly loved a fight.

He shook himself again. What would Parker think? Or Brennan? He already knew what Cam thought.

"I'm sorry," and was surprised to hear that his voice grated.

"You don't drink?" she said it with a laconic sort of irony. He clenched his jaw.

"No." He opted for the nicest answer. She seemed platonic in her ministrations as she slowly pulled the shards of glass out of both his fists. Afterwards, she wrapped them up with the tape she admonished he should have been wearing while boxing and iced both his shoulders. Booth, unable to take her pitying gaze was startled at the pin over her breast pocket.

"The twenty third?"

"Infantry," she smiled serenely.

"You see combat?"

"You did," she shrugged. He didn't respond and the conversation was closed.

"I gotta go," he forced through gritted teeth, his muscles suddenly shaking. She didn't say anything, but backed away respectfully; he ran his tongue along his teeth, tasting blood from the cut he had received when Cam decked him. It got caught often as he clenched his jaw, and hadn't had time to heal with his constant smoldering rage.

He stalked from the building, and only upon leaving did he finally realized he had caused quite a scene.

His feet took him to the hospital where the nurses in the emergency room rushed around him, flocking to him like chicks to their mother's warm under wings, yet they were the ones squabbling like hens asking if he was in need of medical assistance. Booth wasn't even sure if the things he spat through clenched teeth were whole words or just sort of Neanderthal grunts that indicated preference.

Finally he escaped to a fire stairwell where he took the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor; by the third landing he was panting and dizzy. He couldn't remember eating in over 24 hours. He couldn't remember sleeping for two months. Lord, what was he turning into? He took a quick stock looking at his soul, which he loved to envision as an antique car he could slowly repair as a hobby. Although it looked the same as ever - a shatterglass windshield punched with bullets in radiating fractures from harmful life events connecting one another - he realized that his rage was reopening a crack he had thought he had long since sealed by ignoring it. It was the fear. And it was his father.

It was both the fear of his father, and the inevitability that he would become him. He hadn't dared to tell Brennan, because she usually scoffed at his idiocy. But he could never quite get his tongue to beg her to actually listen. To actually realize it wasn't a passing fancy, but rather one that consumed him and drove most of his actions, both the rash and the rational.

He felt like a stalker watching her, and his all consuming and all exhausting rage – the one that burned through his veins like hot whiskey and yet took pieces of himself, pieces of his sanity that he knew he would later regret and yet could not bring himself to care now, to be burned away in a firestorm of fury- flared anew. He was standing outside her room, staring through the window of the door, and his eyes were met by those of Hodgins, who was sitting inexorably next to his friend, colleague and boss' side. He looked tired, but upon seeing Booth, his eyes shot open. He silently made his way and yanked open the door.

"How is she?" Booth was surprised to hear his voice rasped as if he had been screaming all night. He idly wondered if he had; he wondered if he would ever be let into that gym again. He hoped so; 24 hour gyms were not frequent in his neighborhood. He shook himself.

"She's good…I mean, as well as can be expected. It's touch and go, but the drugs seem to be making her happy. She's under security watch, though they can't send out police for who we know really ordered…"

"Why not?" interrupted Booth.

"Well the message, while it points to Devon, doesn't link the two inextricably. She could have been a victim of a violent crime and the fact that she lost consciousness during that attack rather diminishes her witness testimony."

"What about the pictures?" raged Booth, "and the flowers?"

"All sent by anonymous donors. The flower shop says it's usually secretaries who call in on behalf of their boss without their boss knowing in order to help keep up their reputation. In this case, it didn't have to be Devon who called directly. They can't even get a warrant to tap the phone lines and trace the call."

"The bird….the…" Booth's jaw was on the floor with his outrage and dignity.

"Those are all perfectly legal. Transporting human remains via the post office is not _strictly _politically correct, but these bones were bought and sold with a receipt included in the box Cam made me go through-" Booth suddenly realized in his conspicuous absence, Cam had gathered up her people as a detective force and had had to make due without him. He had never felt such a selfish little shit in all his life.

"So…there's no way we can touch him," surmrised Booth in his ghostly whisper. Hodgins nodded a grim affirmative.

"He counted on it. The best they can do is set up a police watch outside her building to prevent 'whomever'," Hodgins lent the last word heavy disgusted emphasis, "is stalking her, any access." Hodgins' impossibly blue eyes turned concerned and then bulged seeing Booth's hands and arms.

"Where have you been man? What... did you get in a fight? There are bruises all over your hands, and the palms – good God there's slices everywhere. What are you a cutter?" His question was half joking, half serious, and right on the mark into Booth's past. Booth growled an inarticulate sound.

"This is ridiculous," he fumed, glaring into Brennan's room. "I want to see her. I want to talk to her. I have to."

"You can't be in the room," said Hodgins urgently. "Man, they have cameras and the security guy posted out here is on a coffee break. He could come back any minute."

"So basically, it's just you and me," said Booth quietly, and threateningly. Hodgins looked positively shocked Booth could even think such a thing, but steadily stood his ground, knowing he would lose hands down, and willing to try.

"No." The voice was cool. "No, it's you and _me_." Booth seethed and turning around saw (to his immediate relief that it wasn't Sweets, or he would have popped the kid a new smile), Cam holding a completely legal can of mace.

"I can't do this," whispered Booth, staring at her hard eyes full of intent. He suddenly realized he was going up against his friends. That he was staging a coup of him against the world, just as Brennan had said. He realized he was fighting with his oldest friend, had threatened a new one, and was dripping cold water from his ice mingled with tiny drops of his blood on the floor.

"Seeley you need to calm down," said Cam steadily. And Booth ached suddenly seeing what she was going through. Unbeknownst to him, she had once told Brennan that he read people like lab charts. Booth could tell that Cam, while picking up the pieces and holding everyone together in some sort of semblance of normalcy, was dying to let go. He also knew she never would and would continue holding onto this broken little family until it tore her apart. Until _he _tore her apart. He realized he was the destructive force ruining all their lives. The realization took him to the blackest despair he had ever known since he was desperate and sixteen, holding a glimmering blade in a long ago bathroom.

"I…" he faltered, but a hand clapped him on the arm.

"Sir I'm going to have to ask you to leave." It was the security guard, back from his break. Booth saw both Cam and Hodgins tense in expectation, but he simply nodded, his muscles liquefying and he slumped into himself as he left the building.

When he got to his apartment, he looked in the mirror and swore. He looked horrible; he looked more the part of a killer than anyone he imagined Devon to look like. Then Booth realized he had killed more people than he had. The realization made him sick.

He was a murderer.

And now he was a drunk. He was so angry that he had thrown and shattered something in public. He had physically threatened Hodgins. Cam had pulled a weapon on him.

He was a murderer and he was killing the people he loved.

Booth thought, very briefly, about dying.

He methodically stripped off his clothes, his rigid actions and ingrained route of a quick soldier's shower much easier to concentrate on than his downward spiral of depression. He could feel himself shattering slowly apart and realized, halfway through his hot shower on his aching muscles that stung in his new cuts, that he was not only killing them, he was killing himself.

Which was pointless.

He had gone to the war never looking to come back, and many of his friends hadn't. He mentally throttled himself for almost letting their sacrifices to keep him alive mean nothing. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, although Brennan had never told him outright, she could not survive if he died 'again,' but this time without the possibility of an impossible rebirth.

Finally naked, the rivulets of water rolling off his bare skin, and his salty sweet tears running on the inside of his soul, Booth took the first breath he felt he had taken in hours. The all consuming rage that had fogged about him for days, maybe even weeks if he was so self absorbed, dissipated, leaving his true objective needle sharp with clarity. He methodically, enjoying the soldier's unthinking autopilot instead of overcomplicating his life with his painful thoughts, put back on new clothes. He combed his hair and shaved off the patchy stubble he had accumulated. He wiped down his tired eyes and ate a bag of chips from start to finish that proclaimed "family size." He drank his entire half pitcher of lemonade and was dismayed to find his fridge empty. The pantry raid breakfast with Brennan felt a lifetime ago. It suddenly occurred to him he needed to go grocery shopping.

He looked around his apartment, usually rather tidy, and was dismayed to find that clothes, forks, towels and thrown magazines were strewn across furniture and floor alike. Brennan hadn't even said a word. Booth realized, as if for the first time, that since he had broken all of his windows in a blind rage, one that he had not cared to tamp or control, there was a patina of shining shattered shards littering his woods floors. Not really a neat freak, Booth unearthed some lemon pledge, swept everything with one fell swoop from his dining table, wiped it off and sat down in the chair, ignoring the clutter on the floor in favor of making a list.

It started small, with the facts he knew about Devon, but quickly moved to the computer. Within an hour he had an address and an employment office where he freelanced. Booth's breath quickened as he stolidly refused to think about what he was doing. He let his soldier self keep control. He realized suddenly, that his emotional self experienced much grey in the world, and a lot of doubt and flashbacks. His soldier self…none. He reveled in his surety. In the black and in the white. In the control.

He grabbed his keys.


	26. Only The Selfish Survive

**I'm sorry for the delay; I wrote this out, deleted it, and tried something new. It's still Brennan's perspective, but we finally get to look inside some of the more overlooked characters.**

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Brennan was dumbfounded; her mother was crying. Her mother, the bank robbing bookie who during her whole life, had told her to be strong and reserved. Brennan moved slowly, sluggishly, through the pretty light swirling around her arms to try to swipe away the tears, to ease the struggling, the heart wrenching sobs, the quiet weeping. Brennan realized she was bound to something, lying down, and her mother was fleeing before her pity, as Brennan herself would have done. Her weeping was quieter now, but not gone, and mostly silent tears with small whimpers. The coughs of self irritation were familiar and Brennan almost smiled hearing them again, or would have if her heart hadn't been bruised by hearing such complete soul flooding pain.

She came slowly awake, swimming through the sobs, in order to figure out how to interpret such a dream. Her eyelids fluttered open; she dare not move. Her mind, always moving faster than others, told her to hold still and that she was severely injured. Instead of the usual rustle of a sleeper waking, Brennan simply breathed in and out, feeling – although she was cognizant – that her brain moved more slowly than usual, as if it too were sluggishly wading through the pretty light that she realized was the sunlight dancing across her eyelids.

She looked about her cautiously. The room was very bland. She wondered if the designers of hospitals had an annual convention to find the most abhorrent wallpaper and paint colors they could possibly contrive. Instead of the oft advertised toothpaste green walls, hers were a cheerfully sickly yellow, as if a starving child had rolled through calcite and urine. Brennan had to wonder if anyone else had noticed this. To her left stood the door, an irritating heart monitor (which led her to flash back to her last recent hospital visit), and an iv. She let her gaze slip right; it had been less than a second than she had woken, and finally realized that sound that had covered her heartbeat and filtered into her subconscious. Someone was crying. Brennan turned her head just the smallest bit, feeling her cheek slide against the cool pillowcase. The smallest sound, however, caused the secret sobs to hitch and Brennan's eyes widened. Someone was crying, and it wasn't whom she had thought.

Cam was curled into an armchair like a young girl, knees to her face, arms tucked under her thighs, hugging herself as if no one else would, or could. Her usual dress and classy appearance were notably absent in favor of jeans and a skimpy tank top. A baggy hoodie lie cast upon the ground. Her obsidian dark hair, usually tidily stuffed into a bun, hung lank and starkly against her latte skin. She had yanked her face up at Brennan's slight stirrings.

"Brennan," she gasped, her usual professionalism discarded with her dress, "I…I…" she hastily wiped her thick puffy eyes. Brennan was silent; she hated when Booth wasn't there to direct her what to say.

"Is…everything all right?" she asked gingerly, unsure if she was going in the right direction.

To her terror, Cam's reaction to her question was to break afresh into a new round of tears. She cried quietly, mostly just with little coughs instead of sobs, and streaming eyes instead of horrible gagging of strangled words.

"I…uh…" Brennan struggled to sit, afraid she had said the wrong thing and Cam sprung upwards quickly, guiltily, to help elevate the bed to a sitting position.

"Are you…all right? Is there something wrong with my statement? With Booth? Is Booth all right?" Brennan felt her voice escalate in panic.

"No," said Cam hastily, "No everyone is fine."

"Oh," Brennan was puzzled. "Then why are you…" she trailed off with a feeble gesture. Cam laughed a sodden pathetic laugh, as if laughing it away would make it better.

"Oh it's stupid. Just the stress." Brennan, gullible in matters of the heart, swallowed her shallow lie willingly and therefore was shocked at Sweets' voice cutting in.

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?" said Cam, who appeared completely flabbergasted; Brennan observed as her face blossomed into a furious scarlet.

"I said that's bullshit," Sweets stepped out from the corridor, and Brennan was surprised at his appearance. Like Cam, he had radically deviated from what she considered his normal standards. He was dressed in jeans and a long sleeved top and his hair was wilder and more curly than usual, as if he hadn't brushed it. Bloodshot eyes matched bright red sneakers and Brennan had to wonder if she had woken in an alternate timeline (though she chided herself for letting Booth talk her into watching _Star Trek_) where Cam was weak and whimpering and Sweets wasn't as adorably naïve.

"Sweets," stuttered Cam, "you look…you look…"

"So do you." His voice was grim, deeper, as if he had been forced to age years in the day Brennan had apparently slept through.

Cam looked very irritated at the interruption and hastily wiped her puffy eyes and chapped lips with the back of her hand; she still looked horrible in Brennan's opinion, but she said nothing. Who was she to comment on someone else's pain, when no one had commented on her own?

She wasn't sure yet if she was grateful or outraged.

"That sickening feeling," Sweets continued, dropping himself into the armchair where Cam had been curled, feline in her repose, "is guilt." Cam froze, halfway between retrieving her jacket from the floor and straightening.

"What?" asked Brennan, completely bewildered. For once in her life, she felt as if she were not concurrent with events and could not understand, regardless of her force of will or mental aptitude. It dawned on her with a horrible feeling that this was what it must be like to be stupid. She hated it. The conversation that seemed to be saying more than what was said aloud, and continued blithely indifferent to her enraged distemper.

"You're slinking out." Sweets' laugh matched the dispassionate words and his ashen face.

"I am not," Cam automatically responded, spine stiffening as she bumped against the foot of Brennan's bed. "And I don't like what you're implying," she snapped. "That I feel guilty." Brennan breathed a sigh of relief; that was the Cam she knew so well. She felt that the tennis match continued beyond her line of sight, though she had a clear view of both players right in front of her.

"You pretend you've got it in control," Sweets may have well been talking to the linoleum on the floor. His disinterested gaze and dead voice certainly suggested as much to Brennan. "You pretend you've got it all figured out. And everyone around you," he laughed hollowly, "they are rushing about like decapitated chickens. They're flinging the blood everywhere, but the only person it really belongs on is you. So you stand up and take charge, because it seems like no one else will."

"Sweets," Cam's voice was very soft now, and not antagonistic at all. Brennan had been following fairly well; apparently Sweets was speaking of Cam being in charge when Brennan had a concussion. Yet Cam's altered expression and tone of voice led her to believe Sweets was speaking of something else entirely. She was adrift once more.

"What?" his voice was still dull, his eyes still staring far away. His 'what' was more a ornery response that a question. He continued, not looking at either Cam or Brennan. "You feel too young. You feel like it should be someone else, _anyone_ else. You feel like that guy next to you, the one who has it in control, you thought he would take responsibility. That he would take control. But he's just as lost, maybe more so, staring in fascinated horror at a tragedy. So you look around at the mess and realize you're the single person who seems awake enough to do it. To clean up. But you don't feel awake at all." His brow puckered. "Actually, you feel more asleep than most of the others look. The voice, the actions – they aren't yours. They're far away. Inwardly you want to scream, but outwardly you let them. But honestly? They're being selfish. It's _not_ about them." His voice had broken on the word _selfish_ and again in his negation. Brennan felt recognition glimmering, but couldn't seem to place what Sweets was talking about.

"It's not," he echoed again. Brennan dimly recalled his sharp rebuke to her friends: "_For once in your lives, this is not about you."_ She realized he truly understood what it was like for no one to look twice at you; to walk down empty hallways of a lonely house. She finally caught up with his meaning, at least parts of it, and was too busy playing the words back to herself to catch Cam's response.

"Sweets…er…Lance…" Cam was fumbling, almost as awkward as Brennan in interpersonal conversations. She was a hell of a director, and a hell of a cop; that's what Booth always said to Brennan anyways.

"Just go," shrugged Sweets. "I'll sit with her a while." Cam it seemed, in a sort of perverse tenacity, sank her thighs on the bottom of Brennan's bed.

"There's nowhere I have to be," she said quietly. And for the very first time, Brennan saw _something_ glimmer in Sweets' face that looked normal, that looked whole, that looked beautiful and not broken. _Hope. _

"What are we talking about?" interrupted Brennan petulantly, still unsure of how much she understood.

"Life," said Cam at once and Sweets' response overlapped with hers.

"Being selfish." A funny look crossed Cam's face and she softly corrected him while running fingers through her tangled hair.

"Being human."


	27. I Never Want To Live Without You

**Oh and a shout out to my one shot! Please read it and review. And if you've already read it – read it again and review. Or review some more. I'm sad only to have a handful. I worked hard! You guys know; I had to take time off of this story for that one.**

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Booth was trying to reason with himself. What he was doing, as Bones would say, wasn't logical. In fact, it was a horrible idea. Well, at least that's what he told his body which ignored him as he moved stealthily, inexorably forward. He was not an assassin.

Oh, but he was.

This is what he'd been trained for his whole life. He didn't creep up the stairs; it was daylight. It was almost lunchtime. He didn't need to sneak, and if Devon was there, so much the better. No one saw him, so no one could comment.

Booth let himself be a soldier, and ignored his civilian mind, which was feeling squeamish about his choice. Yet he knew, deep down, he would make the choice whichever outlook he used. Bones was injured, almost crippled; someone had to pay for that. He had threatened mobsters, and gunned down terrorists. This was similar. When it came to Brennan, there were no shades of grey. There was only her alive and her dead. Only one choice was even close to acceptable. While there were many shades and levels of Brennan being Brennan, dead was one-dimensional. He should know.

He felt his heart pounding through his ears, his blood rushing into his head almost making his vision swim. Something else swam at the edges of his vision and he hissed under his breath for his lingering PTSD to go away. He stalked to the doorway, seeing the brass number gleaming as he knocked politely. Or rather, pounded viciously, his rage lapping at the shore of his mind.

There was silence. Booth didn't have his gun drawn, but his muscles were quivering so much he knew he could have drawn, cocked and fired dead center in the least possible amount of time.

"Mr. Greerson!" Booth called politely through the door, "this is the FBI." Booth winced, he knew he couldn't invoke the Bureau off hours. He changed his tone. "This is Agent Booth, could you please open the door." It wasn't a request.

Silence.

Anxious now, Booth realized that Devon should have been at home; he didn't work on a regular basis. Booth resolved to stand guard, and his shaking, blaring senses fled him in a huge wave of exhaustion. He would wait then, until Devon came home.

With a grunt of last lingering ire, Booth punched his fist into the door. He whimpered in surprise – both because he had forgotten his broken knuckles and scraped skin – and because he had inadvertently hit something metal.

Squinting, Booth searched his memory for a piece of metal on his door simultaneously as he drew his fist away. His eyes, at first snagged onto his own skin and the reopened bleeding cuts, suddenly ripped themselves all the way open in exaggerated surprise to see what he had stumbled upon. He felt his soldier outlook fleeing before his discovery. Carefully, ever so carefully, and making sure to leave his fingerprints no where but what he was prying off of the door with a knife, he unglued a small round object and slipped it into his pocket.

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"Can I come in?" asked Booth quietly, watching Brennan's face change from confused to delight on her bed. She was looking better. She pulled a face on him, but he could tell she was bluffing. He pulled out his metaphorical Ace of Spades; "I brought Thai food…" Her face bloomed into a grin.

"Oh…well, I guess so."

"And Founding Fathers," he said, holding up the other bag. Her smile grew wider.

"What no pie from the diner?" Booth scoffed.

"Nah, it doesn't keep."

"Can I come in?" Booth asked once more, this time, more politely to Angela, who smiled hugely, seemingly thrilled the two partners were speaking again.

"If Brennan says it's okay, then it's fine by me. She got rid of the guard this morning after Cam's shift."

"How is Cam?" Booth asked seriously.

"Cam was here?" asked Brennan; Booth noticed she looked completely blank. "When?" Booth saw as Angela's face darkened slightly as a shadow danced across it.

"You were talking to her and Sweets just this morning, sweetie." Brennan's face also grew apprehensive.

"What did I say?"

"You were mostly confused, and asking what they were talking about when I came in," said Angela placatingly. Booth watched closely as Brennan nodded in relief.

"I'm going to go um…" Angela gestured inanely out the door with no real end to the sentence in mind. It didn't matter; Booth only had eyes for one person.

The tension wasn't the elephant in the room; it was the goddamn zoo. For an entire second, Booth was sure his eardrums would burst from the utter lack of sound as he stared at his beautiful, broken partner.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and Booth felt his heart heal in a wash of beauty, as if he had been on fire and someone had upended 30 gallons of water onto his chest. He felt quenched for the first time in ages, when he had been parched for so very long.

"It's okay," he shrugged it off, piling the food on the bed.

"Booth!" she shrieked, grabbing his arm so hard he winced as her nails dug into the skin. "What did you…" Her voice dropped and he felt his eyes do the same in shame.

"I put my fist through all my windows."

"That was not logical," she said severely. Booth laughed hollowly.

"Thanks for that." He began unpacking the food and the utensils. He looked up suddenly. "Are you going to remember this conversation?"

"I believe so," she said, her face honest. "I have often been told I've been awake in brief spurts, but I suppose with Cam that was the longest I had been awake. It makes sense that my first wakening would be afflicted with antegrade amnesia."

"Huh?"

"Amnesia from a major concussion in the brief period after waking. You yourself have experienced…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," interrupted Booth. His eyes became black as he slowly ate some food from the bed. "You don't know what I went through Bones," he said in a low, gravelly voice. "You can't even begin to imagine what the last 24 hours have been."

She was silent so long, Booth had to look up in surprise. Her face was stony, and her hand still in her lap, fork shaking between her fingers. "Bones!" He was surprised and heard his voice shoot up an octave in surprise. "What's wrong?" He was even more surprised at her voice.

"How could you say that?" Her voice was quivering. "How could you say…" her body was shivering just as much as her voice. The heart monitor was beeping faster now. In one fell swoop, Booth had shoved all the boxes (miraculously unspilled), to the foot of the bed and climbed into the bed right next to her.

"Bones?"

"You knew I wasn't dead." Her voice was toneless, hollow.

"Yeah, but – I did this to you," he choked.

"No. Don't say that," her voice was consoling but cold. Shaken. "Just think of it that we're even."

"_What_ are you talking about?" Booth was bewildered, but her mottled bruised skin, though he could see the black bruise of her shoulder next to him, had goosebumps. He gently draped an arm around her neck; she shivered but slumped into him as usual.

"I know what it's like," she whispered quietly. "Because for two weeks I actually thought you were dead."

"That…that wasn't my fault…" he fumbled with the words. She had never mentioned this before.

"Of course not." Her voice was like her face; carefully constructed to keep him out. Her persona hitched back into place, she reached for a box of rice and chopsticks. She was much more adroit at eating with chopsticks than he.

"Bones," his voice was low, pleading. He hated to beg.

"I know what you did," she said quietly instead. He looked at her in shock, but she didn't return his gaze, instead gazing stolidly at the dish she was eating.

"What are you…" he trailed off as her blue eyes suddenly bored into his, and took his breath away.

"You went to find him."

"I did." His confession was hushed, and his breath hitched, dangling before a precipice with the hungry eyes of so many of his fallen comrades. He didn't know what his face told her, but her eyes softened and she pulled her legs towards her battered chest, wheezing slightly until he gently moved her as if she weighed no more than a feather.

"And…" she whispered. Instead of an answer, he pulled her head to his chest where she could hear his heart beating out his veracity.

"He wasn't there." For someone who knew little about human emotion, she surely pegged him with her gaze and her repeated sentence.

"And?" He tucked his chin over her hair and closed his eyes as he uncurled his hand. She said nothing as well but instead curled against him, as if she could somehow lie there forever and mend the cracks he felt running through himself.

They fell asleep, Booth holding her as if she were a security blanket, and feeling her sliced fingers curl into his shirt as if she would never let go. He realized, as he dozed, that both of their hands were battered and torn, ripped and bleeding, bruised and broken. As his nervous system shut down, his own stiff fingers uncurled.

The cruel fluorescents glinted off the light of the Columbus coin nestled in the torn flesh of his palms.


	28. Carry Me Close And Dream In The Dark

**The curtain is falling soon on this story, beloved as it is. Unless I get divinely inspired, the next chapter will be the last. But this one, this one is my very favorite. **

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"Sir…sir," Brennan blinked awake, glaring blearily at Booth, who was - predictably - snoring. She nudged him in the ribs. Hard. With a grunt and a snort he came awake.

"What?" The elderly nurse looked stern.

"Sir you cannot be in the bed. She's severely injured. And hospital policy allows only one person per bed."

"I…uh…" Booth was not awake.

"I want him here," said Brennan clearly into the silence.

"I know," smiled the nurse, "But sir you have to get down." Groaning, Booth scrubbed at his face.

"What time is it?" he swung out of bed with a growl. "And we're not…" he gestured between him and Brennan; uselessly, in her opinion. The nurse was inclined to think what she would.

"I'm the last nurse to come in until the morning shift."

"Huh?" Brennan heard Booth shuffling around, and it wasn't until then that she realized it was dark in their room. Someone flipped on a light and she squinted suddenly against the brightness.

"What time is it?" she said with composure. She realized she and Booth, who had been so exhausted, had fallen asleep just a little after 1 in the afternoon.

"It's around midnight," said the nurse; "we didn't want to wake you before, but I came in to offer your husband a bed."

"He's not my husband," she corrected automatically. The nurse didn't bat an eyelash.

"Well, sir," she addressed Booth, who was looking pitiful and little boyish, sleep still clinging about the tufts of hair sticking out at odd angles as he rubbed his ears. "I'll have a cot sent in."

"Fine," rumbled Booth, looking as if he could only understand every other word she was saying. Brennan felt a huge upwelling of pity in her heart. Her partner was rarely ever this exhausted or disoriented.

"It's midnight?" he repeated.

"Yes Booth," she placated, not sure of what he was looking around for.

"I'm starved." He answered her unspoken query without even looking at her face.

Brennan suddenly realized that the nurse was busy adjusting her medication in the iv. She spoke in a low voice,

"Do you need to use the restroom dear?"

"No, I… I mean…" The nurse unearthed a bedpan and Brennan's face caught flame. She couldn't imagine anything more mortifying. She didn't know what to say or how to speak, and so was grateful when Booth bounded up.

"No, I'll help her to the bathroom."

"She probably shouldn't walk; she's had quite a stress." Booth's eyes flipped to black by her choice of words.

"I can carry her." The nurse blinked.

"Sir I…"

"No…it's okay," Brennan said heavily. "I'm fine."

"Bones," he whispered.

"Really ma'am, you should go now. The nurses usually let people try to sleep all night. We won't be in to check on you unless you call the front desk." Brennan was going to protest but struck on an idea.

"Actually, I'm more hungry." She drooped against the pillows, and winced, realizing her back ached from sleeping without moving. Booth, without a word, lowered her bed and fluffed her pillows then pulled her bed back up.

"Yeah," Booth gestured vaguely. "I was looking for our take out. We didn't finish. I thought we could have it for dinner." He turned to the nurse, eyes accusing. "Do you know where it is?"

"I believe it was thrown away," she sniffed, looking at the clipboard. Booth looked as if his rage was in slow motion; before he could do so much as squint, she continued blithely. "But a man with curly hair and blue eyes dropped off your dinner. I've had it warmed up for you."

"Huh?"

"What is it?" asked Brennan eagerly.

"God bless Hodgins," grunted Booth.

"Pizza, I believe, and other Italian food with salad."

"Oh God," groaned Booth, as if he were going to swoon. He followed the nurse out to retrieve it. Brennan knew it was to snag a couple bites before she could divvy up the food fairly.

Using their absence to her advantage, Brennan swung her legs out of bed. Or rather, tried to. Instead, she was left gasping with tears in her eyes when her ribs protested and her arm shaking where she tried to prop herself up. Slowly, ever so slowly, she put the weight on her feet. She shakily grasped the iv stand and shuffled forward. She was grateful the bathroom was less than 10 steps from the bed. Collapsing on the u-bend, she felt exultant and strong. She heard them come in and exclaim in surprise.

"In the bathroom," she called through the door, trying to keep the smugness out of her voice. Standing up was harder. She whimpered involuntarily. She could hear the palms of his hands slap the door in less than a second.

"Open the door," he said softly. "Let me help you." Trembling, she slid the door open, clinging to the iv stand.

"I can do it Booth," she said quietly. He ignored her. She resisted him picking her totally off the ground, but his arm under hers almost took all the weight off her feet. She let him inadvertently carry her back to the bed.

"Thank you," she whispered; instead, he grinned cockily and handed her a piece of margherita pizza.

"This would have been better with pepperoni," he complained. She laughed weakly. She realized the nurse had gone.

"I'm a vegetarian."

They ate companionably.

"I can't _believe_ we slept for almost twelve hours," she said at last, swallowing bottle of water in one long draught.

"Yeah, I literally went back in time," joked Booth. "Went to sleep at one, woke up at twelve." Brennan rolled her eyes.

They were both silent as someone rolled in another cot for Booth, made up with fresh sheets. Booth grunted his thanks and the man left.

"Are we going to sleep?" Brennan asked in surprise. Booth grinned his little boy's smile; one she hadn't seen in months. Her heart almost ripped itself from her chest right there and then.

"I'm not tired." She grinned coyly, and also shyly. She scooted over and patted the sheets next to her. He turned out the light.

His responding grin was feral and he jumped into the bed with controlled force not to hurt her, but enough to make her laugh. Her laughter turned into tear filled coughs. Immediately chastised, Booth stretched out, hitting the button to lay the bed flat. They arched together, quietly, and lay their sides, faces only inches apart as they whispered their secrets to snake together in the dark. At first, Booth had placed his warm hand over hers on the sheets, but his restlessness, always present, caused his hand to wander. Brennan shivered both pleasurably and in utter confusion as his hand meandered over her arms, her hair, her eyelids. She never protested, and their confidences still slithered sleekly between their puffed whispered breaths, hot on their cheeks. But she grew very, very still as one of Booth's arms cradled her head, and the other began stroking her stomach with the lightest of touches. She wasn't sure if he was doing it to make her laugh or to make her cry. Brennan realized with a start she was shivering with pain and pleasure and something unremembered. He said nothing, but she knew he could feel it.

"You had an abortion." The words were hushed. Quiet.

"I did." Evenly.

"He raped you."

"He did…I had no where to go."

"Is that all?" She shook beneath him

"Don't tou-" she cutoff, her words, biting down on them, blushing. She could feel him grin against the sheets of the bed, the cotton wrinkling around his facial muscles. She smiled in spite her self.

"Don't touch you? Come on Bones it's a little late for that." Brennan swallowed and turned her face into the mattress to muffle her words and hide her shadowy expression.

"Don't touch me there."

"What on your stomach? You've never minded before." Brennan frowned.

"Booth, what are you talking about?"

"Bones…we've never had boundaries – I'm serious." She could hear the multiple meanings shading his voice. Ashamed, she whispered her request, shaking beneath his hand, and not wanting to break down.

"Please stop."

"Stop what?" he whispered. "Guessing?"

"You're hurting me," she said instead. He stopped and her heart ached a little more fully; she knew she had played dirty. It was only a brief moment before he began tracing little veins on the sensitive inside of her arm.

"Where _am_ I allowed to touch, without hurting you?" With bated breath, wondering at her own daring, Brennan plucked his big hand off of her forearm and guided his hand over her heart.

"Here. You can stay here." He was dead silent, and she could feel her chest expanding against the heat of his hand. What he said next surprised her.

"I've killed a lot of people."

"I'm glad you didn't have to kill another one," she whispered.

"I was too young to go to war." His voice broke. She breathed in a reverse sigh.

"No one is ever old enough."

"You were too young to go to war too."

"I was."

"But war came to you first."

"And you."

She could feel Booth tense on the sheets next to her.

"Yes," he said in a dark, quiet voice, one that shivered up her spine like chocolate. "It wasn't a fair fight."

"Kids can be cruel," she observed. His eyes squinted at the shadows around her face.

"So can parents." Brennan swallowed and opened her heart and mouth, honestly, for the first time in weeks.

"I'm sorry that happened to you." Booth gave a hollow laugh.

"Why would you ever be sorry for me, after what happened to you?"

"Parents can be cruel," she whispered again, and was horrified to hear the sobs that had been burning in her throat hiccup out of her, only inches from his face as she realized her face was soaked in salty tears. The despair filled her as she remembered; parents could be cruel. He was immediately there, inches so much closer stroking under her eyes with strong fingers, his body heat rippling over her thin cloth nightgown as she shivered and convulsed, in pain in more ways than one.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey," he soothed, hugging her in shock. "What's wrong? Did it hurt, did the abortion hurt?" She sobbed into his shirt and whispered the words she had never before told anyone, the words that were part of ripping herself apart. They were part of her pain, of her very personality, so inextricably intertwined with her past, it was impossible to extract.

"I didn't have an abortion." She could feel him. He was frozen beneath her fingers, and in response, her sobs became silent.

"What?" It was a terrified whisper. She shook, and finally, finally, let the damn break. Her entire life, she had been waiting to tell someone; now that it was here, she was scared. She choked.

"I had a miscarriage. And I think…think I wanted the baby….Really Booth. I never wanted kids, I never liked holding infants because of what it reminded me of. But I…I wanted the baby. Just to have something that was mine. To be my family. I felt like finally, here was something I could adore without reserve, who would love _me_ more than anything. It was selfish, I know… Is that wrong? But it didn't want me. He didn't want me. I…no one…no one…wants…" Her voice had broken beyond words and she simply clung, naked before his searching eyes, forcing her secrets through her teeth, knowing he was ashamed, that he hated her.

"Stop it. Stop. Hey, hey, hey. That's not true. It's not true." Her wracking sobs were shaking the bed. She tucked her face into the sheets, unwilling to believe him.

"Even the baby…even it…didn't…."

"Come off it Brennan, if no one wants anyone, it's that no one wants _me_. Look at me. My mom didn't want me. My dad…and now look what I am. I threaten my friends. I'm dangerous. I've got issues." Her sobs were cut short at the sincerity, the terror in his voice that clearly spoke how much fear was wrapped around his father. She cleared her throat quietly, wiping her face as she squinted at him.

"Booth…You are the most honorable person I know." He was quiet, and she could hear his thick disbelief. Instead his question ransacked her pitiful defenses.

"Why did you say you had an abortion? How could you…I mean I just don't understand…" She could hear him struggling for words in the dark; he had stopped touching her, and she shivered for lack of warmth. It hurt her, sliced coldly through her in an icy trail, when she realized he purposefully didn't gather her in his arms. She swallowed. She couldn't see his eyes, just the dark shadows between his brow and cheekbones in the unilluminated dusk, but she could still read his meaning; he demanded an honest answer.

"I'd rather be able to say I rejected it…rather than it rejected me," she whispered. Her need for control was pitiable. She turned her gaze away from his piercing one, feeling it even if she couldn't see it. So she was surprised when he moved closer to her, the air between them heating instantly a good five degrees as his big arms snaked around her. She couldn't find it in her to bring up the 'partner' façade; it felt too good for him to just hold her together.

"I know what that's like," he answered quietly. His voice was so soft, she could feel it radiate up her mandible more than hear it in her eardrums. "I walked away from my family never looking back; in some ways I made Jared into who he is today."

"No," she said flatly. "Everyone makes their own decisions."

"But they make them based on what they know," he interrupted curtly.

"If that's true," Brennan hesitated, her voice very small between them, just a lost child in a vast canyon, "then you should hate me. I don't know anything about love."

"Me neither." She almost laughed, if she hadn't been so shocked. Anger burned up between her broken ribs, robbing her breath but lending her voice. "Don't you ever lie to me Booth; everything about you is love. Every single part of you."

"Maybe that's just what I hope; maybe I'm fighting the inevitable." His voice was laden with despair.

"You and your stupid religious superstitions," she snapped back. He was being preposterous.

"What are you talking about?" he seemed honestly bewildered.

"That biblical story – you know the one - of Jacob and Esau. Jacob was a con artist."

"Wha…well, I guess. More or less…I suppose."

"But look at Jacob's son Joseph; that's who you're named after. He saved thousands of lives. He was honest when he shouldn't have been. He was faithful even after being raised in a competitive family full of deceit. His family tried to kill him. They abused and abandoned him. He went into a hostile territory. But in the end…he was good. You are just like him, Booth. You _are_ him. Sometimes the good wins out."

"I cannot believe you just taught me a Bible lesson." His voice was laced with something she couldn't quite grasp – amusement perhaps? She kept the heat in her voice, just to make him listen.

"And I cannot believe you would ever doubt yourself. I never do. I've never once had reason to doubt you. Hodgins once told me I had faith in you; I didn't understand what he meant. I responded that I had seen your abilities and that I knew your character. He corrected me. But for a long time I didn't know what faith was. Yet now…you've taught me. Faith is about believing when everything points to the contrary."

"What?" She could tell he was picking up on her multiple meaning; it had crept into the thread without her noticing, and it was too late to take it back.

"Everything I've known screams at me to run. And yet you stayed. You're always…there for me. Even when my whole life, nothing and no one has been." She could feel his smile against the skin of her shoulder – when had they gotten so close on the bed?- and she couldn't help but smile in response.

"And everything _I've_ known hates the rational; because it makes too much damn sense. It takes the mystery out of life."

"Then why did you stick about?"

"Stick around Bones, stick around. I stayed because you add more mystery than you detract. You're the one person I can always count on, and one person who always surprises me."

"That's an oxymoron. It cannot be possible."

"And yet it is. Faith and rationality."

"We're on the wrong sides of the argument," she observed clinically. He didn't smile, but his hand, which had been entwined around her arm, drifted down with the lightest of butterfly touches between their hot bodies.

"Brennan." His voice was soft silk and hot coffee. She felt his hand on her stomach; he kept it there even feeling her flinch, and she almost squirmed feeling how warm his skin was against hers.

"I will never, ever leave you." His voice was dusk and summer, sincere and threadbare. She wrapped her own scraped fingers around his forearms, marveling to herself at the feel of his muscles, even relaxed. She was just as genuine.

"And I wont ever let you change into something or somebody you're not."

"That's right," he smiled, "you've already stopped that from happening- you noticed all the little changes after my coma."

"So you have nothing to fear. No monsters under the bed." She was teasing, but he took it with a straight face, neither one moving or removing their hands.

"As long as you're here," he agreed, "there are no monsters under the bed."

"You left," she whispered, the agony in her voice. He dropped his forehead against hers, as if it were the most natural gesture in the world.

"I did."

"You lied."

"So did you."

"Why did we break ourselves into a million little pieces?" She wondered, her voice no louder than the wind through silent graves.

"Maybe because when we stop," Booth said, his voice more rumble than words, "we get to pick up the pieces and put them where we want."

"A new beginning."

"A new beginning."

Booth's other hand came to settle next to his first, but this one on the dipped hollow of her side.

"I will hold you together," he vowed.

She clenched her hands in fists around his shirt, over his beating heart.

"And I will never let you go," she reciprocated.

And both fitting the pieces inside themselves, and aligning the fabrics of their lives, they felt the stitches tighten snugly, stronger than before, and the cracks weld shut.

They waited just to open their eyes, to that beautiful new beginning.


	29. Stitch Me Up And Dress You Down

**I know how sorry I'll be to see this come to a close, but I honestly think that dragging out something messy is almost as cruel as making it bad in the first place. I find a poetic sense of justice, that this ends right at the premiere of season six. ****C'est la finale, mes amis. Buen provecho. (Yes yes, don't chide me on mixing languages). ****Oh, and a wonderful round of applause for Emily Deschanel's private marriage to It's Always Sunny in Philidelphia's actor David (another David ow ow) Hornsby on September 25, 2010. **

* * *

It was a nice feeling, waking up with a woman in his arms. Maybe better that he loved her. Booth buried his half awake face into Brennan's hair.

"Get off," she growled, pushing against him. He chuckled evilly. "Do we have to do this every morning?" she grouched.

"How many days has it been?" he laughed, stretching his legs to the end of his bed. He had been sleeping so well.

"A week." Her voice wasn't as contented as his was; it was scared. She had consented to sleeping in his bed – for protection – she had protested – when she had been released from the hospital, but they hadn't been _sleeping together_ in that sense. Booth could hear the unease blanketing her voice, as surely as the sheets were twisted about her frame, ripped from his hot skin by her groping fingers in the middle of the night.

"He'll turn up." They both knew what they were speaking of; they didn't need to qualify.

"It's been a week," she said in a lower voice. Booth grunted as he flipped his locked arms over his head in a magnificent yawn and a stretch. His shirt had ridden halfway up his chest when he caught Brennan's cool appraising glance roving over his body. He grinned cheekily as he arched toward her.

"Like what you see there Bones?" Her face flushed but she refused to rise to the bait. Instead, she ran her fingers lightly over the ridges of his stomach and Booth's breath went out in a rush as he laughed. He was predictably ticklish. "Not fair!" She rolled out of bed but froze, swaying with her feet softly touching the floor and Booth immediately sat up, placing his large hand over the lower part of her spine. She liquefied against him as Booth scrunched himself to the edge of the bed next to her.

"How you holding up partner?" his voice was cheery, but he knew his countenance was anything but as he gently turned her unresisting face side to side examining her bruises, both inside and out.

Her face was much prettier than it had been for a week. She hadn't been to work, and neither had Booth; they had avoided each other and lived together. He made her sleep in his bed and live in his rooms. She had watched all the blockbuster movies he had brought her without resistance as Booth and she had slept the days away. He had run in and out of the office for old files for the both of them to catch up on. Cam was effective and collected; she had excused Brennan – banished her actually – from the lab for the previous week, ever since poker night and the hospital visit. Booth had seen the guilt ravishing Cam's fine features, but had more pressing issues on his mind. Brennan had been quite (and surprisingly) relenting when he had pressed her to move in with him for the week. She had uncomplainingly packed a bag and let him dote ridiculously on her; she seemed more relieved, and quieter, since the attack, to have someone else in control.

Her ribs were still blackened and Booth knew they gave her pain, but her shoulder had lost its swollen appearance and the bruises had faded to a revolting yellow brown, instead of blue black. Her face, likewise, had a paltry sheen of yellow, but the raised welt and dark bruising was almost gone. On the surface, she was healing well. Booth was relieved to see the heavy scabs where the taser barbs had hit her were no longer weeping.

"I'm okay," she said quietly, under his ministrations. "I'm going to shower."

"Are you sure you can do this?" Booth asked in a murmur. He needn't have asked, nor have seen her resolute nod.

"I can go to work today; I've been going stew crazy."

"Stir crazy."

"That's what I said."

"Get out," he groaned, and her face cracked into a reluctant smile as he fell back on the bed, closing his eyes, waiting for the tub.

"Booth." The two seconds he had lain there weren't nearly long enough. She probably couldn't get the goddamn tap on again.

"Hmmph."

"Booth you have to wake up." Confusion flooded his brain and he cracked his eyes at her.

"What? You have to shower."

"I'm done." His eyes peeled themselves wider at seeing her wet, softly soaped skin hovering near his own. Her face scowled. "And there isn't a shower." He vaguely ran his fingers over her forearm and grinned as he saw goose bumps rise over her skin.

"Did I fall asleep?" he asked in incredulity. He could have sworn only a blink had passed by, not the 15 minutes the clock claimed.

"It's all you ever do," she smiled back at him. He hauled himself into a sitting position, still dumbfounded at her wet wavy hair, hair that begged for fingers to curl into and pull towards his jaw until he could devour her into that bed, just the towel, that goddamn towel always between them, held in front of her body.

"I sleep better when you're around." It slipped out before he could grab it back. "That and those pills help," he nodded gruffly, shaking the little vial on his nightstand.

"Hmm," was her only comment and she turned away to change.

"Bones," he didn't know what he wanted but she turned back. That was a lie; he knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to rip off that cotton sheet between them and hold her body close and show her what she had been missing. She wasn't any good at body language, but he figured it didn't have to take a genius to see what was in his eyes and running through his head.

"Booth," she whispered, as if in pain, but he couldn't keep his fingers from grasping her arms.

"What Bones?" He asked his eyes glued to the wet skin between her breasts, right where flesh ended and towel began.

"I can't," she whispered, in the same broken tone she had used in the hospital. Booth swallowed and stood abruptly.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, with forced cheerfulness, grabbing clothes from the closet as he bounced about the room. "If you don't dry your hair, we'll be late for the office." He closed the door on her cracked façade, as she stood dripping and pitying in the middle of his bedroom.

* * *

"Dr. Brennan!" crowed Hodgins, as they both walked into the lab that morning.

"Dr. Hodgins," she smiled back.

"Good news and good news," he beamed cheerfully, falling into line with her and Booth, and Booth noticed his own hand was hovering around the small of her back; he dropped it, embarrassed.

"You're looking good Sweetie," said Angela, slipping up to Brennan's other side, and sliding her arm through the bend of Brennan's.

"Thanks Angela," smiled Brennan; Booth could see how tired she was. Although Angela was correct, that Brennan looked better physically, Booth could also see her stitching herself mentally. Her normal hard boiled façade had been left in an empty hospital room, or perhaps on a cobblestone driveway. She was getting better. But it was slow. He knew from experience.

"What's the good news?"

"We have a body for you to examine," said Cam, who had come up to greet them. Booth felt as if someone had taken a baseball bat to his stomach. Cam looked awful. She was pale and the dark rings underneath his own eyes which had been eased by a week of easy sleeping next to Brennan, seemed to have transplanted themselves into her latté skin. She was haggard, her hair was lank and greasy and her face was surprisingly bare of makeup.

"Cam," Booth started, but she held up a hand to forestall his words. Booth's heart was scored to see the fingers shaking. He could almost see the guilt as a monster eating her heart out.

"Don't start with me Seeley," and her voice wasn't laughing.

"Who is the body?"

"We have a John Doe," said Angela jerking her thumb at the forensic platform. Brennan dropped her bag by a stray table and bounded up the platform, swiping her card and gloving up quickly and efficiently. Booth followed her tireless work ethic with a sigh that became a stiff grunt upon seeing the body.

"Bones get away." He shouldered her roughly from the body, his gun out before he could think, nor anyone else blink.

"Booth!" screeched Angela, somewhere in the back of his mind he registered their shocked faces as he warily circled the table with Devon's body on a slab.

"Where did you get this?" he growled to Cam. She didn't flinch. He realized she had known, even if she hadn't told Hodgins or Angela.

"Rote suicide," she said calmly. "There was a note."

"What?" asked Brennan, clinically backed against a table.

"The reason we were called in is because of the plastics blast. He blew himself up."

"I don't…" Booth holstered his weapon but unleashed his glare to cut off Brennan's aloud musings. Devon's body was decomposing, both legs blown off and half of his thick rib cage.

"Is there any torture?" asked Booth through gritted teeth.

"Dude, didn't you hear Cam? It's just a suicide," said Hodgins, still confused.

"Cause of death?" said Brennan coolly.

"I'd say the explosive that had been strapped between his legs." Cam's sense of justice was as pleased as Booth's own; they shared a look over Angela's head.

"Oh gross," flinched Angela.

"Poetic justice," whispered Brennan.

"A note?" echoed Booth skeptically.

"Police dropped it by, I'm in charge of that," said Angela. "It's a list of names. I can't figure it out."

"A list of regrets?" guessed Hodgins.

"A list of crimes." Cam's mouth was thin.

"All women?" guessed Booth shrewdly.

"How'd you know?" asked Angela. "It's just the words 'I'm Sorry' and a list of names."

"Handwritten?" asked Brennan, her voice sounding surprised to Booth's ears.

"Yep."

"And why do you think it's a suicide?" asked Brennan again.

"Just the fact that the detonator is seared to the flesh of his fingers. He's holding the goddamn trigger," laughed Hodgins, as if it were the most hilarious thing in the world. Brennan gave him an icy look.

"Am I on the list?" she asked quietly to Angela. Angela's huge grin froze and dropped inch by inch off her face.

"What?" She stumbled back a step as Hodgins' eyes went wide. "_This_ is…_this_…"

"The face is unchanged," grunted Booth. The cadaver's eyes were closed and the flesh seared in places.

"How many hours has the body been here?" asked Brennan, ignoring Angela's swimming tears.

"Just a few hours. The morgue dropped it by last night."

"Do the autopsy," ground out Booth. "Make sure. Confirm without a doubt. I'll inform next of kin."

"Booth…" Brennan's cold voice was gone and she turned away from the others to look at him. "Other people can do that."

"I want to," he forced through his teeth. She took several swift steps and grabbed his elbow, dragging him to the edge of the platform, and put her face next to his, inches too close for societal norms, stealing his breath.

"What are we going to do?"

"About what?" he hissed back.

"I know what happened." His look was level, and blank as he bored his eyes into her blue gaze.

"So do I."

"What are you going to do to him?" He knew she was referencing the Columbus coin.

"Do?" he laughed bitterly. "Shut up and buy the man a drink. He's a hero and as far as we all know, Devon Greerson killed himself and left one hell of a suicide note."

"But that's not the truth," she hissed.

"The truth?" barked Booth, and dragged his voice down to the level between them, as the others, observing them closely, sharpened their gaze as his voice did. "The truth is that he held you down and raped you. He probably did it to a dozen other women. You want to put your old man in jail? You want to clear this bastard's name forever? Jesus Brennan, give it a rest. Let it be. Let his family come under fire. Let his dad lose his job, knowing what he knew. He was just as guilty as his goddamn son. You said it yourself. He could _hear_ and he could _see_ the consequences. Let those women come forward and for the first time, let them be able to _speak_. They cannot drown out the cry of murder. Let them instead cry for freedom." She was shaking under his arms, which were gripping her shoulders cruelly. Her eyes were flicking over his face in complete wonderment.

"How do you know all of this?" she whispered, and she was so close, he could feel her hot breath not only on his skin, but on his tongue.

"Because I know you. And this is a huge part of you. You don't have to hide anymore." She was shaking harder and her blue eyes were flicking faster.

"What?"

"You don't need to hide from me." She dredged up a tremulous smile.

"It's all I'm used to. All I know."

"Don't cry," he murmured, and she wasn't. But as soon as he had said it, she was. He caught her into his arms and felt as if that dead caged bird, built into a prison of curving ivory bones, was finally set free. It wasn't perfect, and it was all smashed up, but she was there, and she was crying because for the first time in her life, she was as human as she had ever been.

Booth realized then, that she had brought him more to life than he had ever been before war. Which war…he didn't know.

He didn't realize he was busy kissing her hair and cradling her shaking frame, until he saw Angela and Hodgins linking hands out of the corner of his eye. Similarly, Cam's erect pose had fallen, like a marionette with its strings cut, into an exhausted heap as she gratefully abdicated her leadership role after two agonizing months.

Brennan hadn't been crying very loudly; and Booth knew she was pulling herself together. It was one thing to be naked in front of him, and very different to be so in front of her colleagues and friends. Booth's chest swelled with a pride he couldn't quite put his finger on, and a feeling of privilege. He decided it was time to shelve those difficult memories, the final, lingering but vanquished effects of his time as a soldier, and even those bickering but true invectives that they had lashed each other with. It was time to return to their rightful places; and he realized they were right there, at the center of the room, holding each other tightly.

They were the center, and the center must hold.

He let a cheeky grin slip over his features, and discovered it didn't hurt him so much anymore. He realized he hadn't worked out in a week and found even more than that he didn't care. He had been busy.

"So Bones, are you coming to sleep over tonight?" His tone was disgustingly and outrageously rakish. His tone was joking but his words were serious. "I've noticed I sleep better when you're around even with the pills." Her face tilted towards him and a sly smile slip over her features.

"Oh," she scoffed, "I implemented the placebo effect. You've been taking Advil for the last four nights. The dreams are in your head Booth. So I calculated that if you figured that you were keeping them at bay, then you could."

He couldn't help but laugh at her irritating and adorable meddling.

"That was very clever."

"I'm considered rather ingenious," she fluttered her lashes at him outrageously.

"And rather a beauty," he murmured, causing her to blush.

"Lady Temperance," he bowed before her and held out his hand. She flounced with her usual grace and slipped her fingers into his.

"Sir Seeley. I suppose I could accommodate you for another week or so."

"Or so," hemmed Booth.

"We'll need to pick up more of my clothes."

"Hell, take your closet."

"We'll see," she swallowed a smile. He fed her the shining coin by slipping it between their tightly clasped palms. She dropped it into a trashcan three blocks from their door.

"Welcome home," said the doorman, bowing to them both, and his approving gaze running over their hands.

Booth winked, and Brennan laughed.

* * *

The End.

* * *

**Now for all the folks all bitter and angry that I've taken away both their toys - as I've completed all my current stories - never fear since I have a new one percolating on the stove. However, I will have to contrive another plot line as we get into the current season.**


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